THE FIRST CRUSADE.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1096. Departure of the first rabble of crusaders under
Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless.]
Little more than half the time allowed for the gathering of the crusaders
had passed away, when a crowd of some sixty thousand men and women,
neither caring nor thinking about the means by which their ends could be
attained, insisted that the hermit Peter should lead them at once to the
holy city. Mere charity may justify the belief that some even amongst
these may have been folk of decent lives moved by the earnest conviction
that their going to Jerusalem would do some good; that the vast majority
looked upon their vow as a license for the commission of any sin,
there can be no moral doubt; that they exhibited not a single quality
needed for the successful prosecution of their enterprise, is absolutely
certain. With a foolhardiness equal to his ignorance, Peter undertook
the task, in which he was aided by Walter the Penniless, a man with some
pretensions to the soldier-like character. But the utter disorder of this
motley host made it impossible for them to journey long together. At
Cologne they parted company; and 15,000 under the penniless Walter made
their way to the frontiers of Hungary, while Peter led onwards a host
which swelled gradually on the march to about 40,000.
[Sidenote: Second rabble under Emico and Gotschalk.]
Another army or horde of perhaps 20,000 marched under the guidance of
Emico, count of Leiningen, a third under that of the monk Gotschalk, a
man not notorious for the purity or disinterestedness of his motives.
Behind these came a rabble, it is said, of 200,000 men, women, and
children, preceded by a goose and a goat, or, as some have supposed, by
banners on which, as symbols of the mysterious faith of Gnostics and
Paulicians, the likeness of these animals was painted. In this vile horde
no pretence was kept up of order or of decency. Sinning freely, it would
seem, that grace might abound, they plundered and harried the lands
through which they marched, while 3,000 horsemen, headed by some counts
and gentlemen, were not too dignified to act as their attendants and to
share their spoil.
[Sidenote: Bloody persecutions of the Jews.]
[Sidenote: The Jews taken under the protection of the empire.]
But if they had no scruple in robbing Christians, their delight was
to prove the reality of their mission as soldiers of the cross by
plundering, torturing, and slaying Jews. The crusade against the Turk
was interpreted as a crusade directed not less explicitly against the
descendants of those who had crucified the Redeemer. The streets of
Verdun and Treves, and of the great cities on the Rhine, ran red with
the blood of their victims; and if some saved their lives by pretended
conversions, many more cheated their persecutors by throwing their
property and their persons either into the rivers or into the consuming
fires. Thus auspiciously began the mighty enterprise on which pope
Urban had insisted as the first duty of all Christians; and thus early
did the result of his preaching tend to revive the waning power of the
emperor, who interposed his authority to this merciless onslaught on a
peaceable and useful class of his subjects. The Jews were taken under the
protection of the empire, and for the time the change was a real relief.
Their posterity found to their cost that their guardian might in his turn
become their plunderer and tormentor.
[Sidenote: March of Walter and his followers through Hungary and
Bulgaria.]
A space of six hundred miles lay between the Austrian frontier and
Constantinople; and across the dreary waste the followers of Walter the
Penniless struggled on, destitute of money, and rousing the hostility of
the inhabitants whom they robbed and ill-used. In Bulgaria their misdeeds
provoked reprisals which threatened their destruction; and none perhaps
would have reached Constantinople, if the imperial commander at Naissos
had not rescued them from their enemies, supplied them with food, and
guarded them through the remainder of their journey. These succours
involved some costs; and the costs were paid by the sale of unarmed men
amongst the pilgrims, and especially of the women and children, who were
seized to provide the necessary funds. Of those who formed the train of
the hermit Peter, seven thousand only, it is said, reached Constantinople.
[Sidenote: Passage of the pilgrims across the Bosporos.]
Of such a rabble rout the Emperor Alexios needed not to be afraid. He
had already seen and encountered far larger armies of Normans, Turks,
and Romans; and he now extended to this vanguard of the hosts of Latin
Christendom a hospitality which was almost immediately abused. They had
refused to comply with his request that they should quietly await the
arrival of their fellow crusaders; and consulting the safety of his
people not less than his own, he induced them to cross the Bosporos, and
pitch their camp on Asiatic soil, the land which they had come to wrest
from the unbelievers.
[Sidenote: Their utter destruction by Kilidje Arslan.]
Alexios wished simply to be rid of their presence: they had to deal with
an enemy still more crafty and formidable in the Seljukian Sultan David,
whose surname Kilidje Arslan marked him out as the Sword of the Lion.
The vagrants whom Peter and Walter had brought thus far on the road to
Jerusalem were scattered about the land in search of food; and it was
no hard task for David to cheat the main body with the false tidings
that their companions had carried the walls of Nice (Nikaia), and were
revelling in the pleasures and spoils of his capital. The doomed horde
rushed into the plain which fronts the city; and a vast heap of bones
alone remained to tell the story of the great catastrophe, when the
forces which might more legitimately claim the name of an army passed
the spot where the Seljukian had entrapped and crushed his victims. In
this wild expedition not less, it is said, than 300,000 human beings had
already paid the penalty of their lives.
[Sidenote: Rank and character of the leaders of the first crusade.]
Still the first crusade was destined to accomplish more than any of the
seven or eight crusades which followed it; and this measure of success
it achieved probably because none of the great European sovereigns took
part in it. The Western emperor, Henry IV., the representative of Charles
the Great was the enemy of the pope; Philip I., king of France, had been
excommunicated by Urban in the council of Clermont; the sovereigns of
Denmark, Scotland, Sweden and Poland were as yet scarcely brought within
the community of European monarchs; the Spanish kings had their crusades
ready made at home; and we have already seen that the English William
II., was more intent on acquiring dukedoms than on running the risk of
a blessed martyrdom at the gates of Jerusalem. The task of setting up a
Latin kingdom in Palestine was to be achieved by princes of the second
order.
[Sidenote: Godfrey of Bouillon and his brothers Baldwin and Eustace.]
Of these the foremost and the most deservedly illustrious was Godfrey,
of Bouillon in the Ardennes, a kinsman of the counts of Boulogne, and
duke of Lothringen (Lorraine). In the service of the emperor Henry IV.,
the enemy or the victim of Hildebrand, he had been the first to mount
the walls of Rome and cleave his way into the city; he might hope that
his crusading vow would be accepted as an atonement for his sacrilege.
Speaking the Frank and Teutonic dialects with equal ease, he exercised by
his bravery, his wisdom, and the uprightness of his life, an influence
which brought to his standard, it is said, not less than 80,000 infantry
and 10,000 horsemen, together with his brothers Baldwin and Eustace,
count of Boulogne.
[Sidenote: Hugh of Vermandois.]
[Sidenote: Robert of Normandy.]
Among the most conspicuous of Godfrey’s colleagues was Hugh, count of
Vermandois, whose surname the Great has been ascribed by some to his
birth as the brother of Philip I., the French king, by others merely to
his stature as ‘Hugh the long.’ With him may be placed the Norman duke
Robert, whose carelessness had lost him the crown of England, and who
had now pawned his duchy for a pittance scarcely less paltry than that
for which Esau bartered away his birthright. The picture drawn of him is
indeed not unlike that of the forefather of the Edomite tribes. Careless
of the future, open in his friendship or his enmity, free from duplicity
in himself and unsuspicious of treachery in others, charming others
and injuring himself by his light-hearted cheerfulness and his lavish
generosity, Robert was a man whom the total lack of the qualities which
marked his iron-hearted father brought to a horrible captivity and death
in the dungeons of Cardiff Castle.
[Sidenote: Robert of Flanders and Stephen of Chartres.]
The number of the great chiefs who led the pilgrims from northern
Europe is completed with the names of Robert, count of Flanders, whom
his followers lauded as the Sword and Lance of the Christians, and of
Stephen, count of Chartres, Troyes, and Blois, the possessor, if we
choose to believe the tale, of 365 castles, and as rich in his eloquence
as in his fortresses. The same arithmetic would have us think that the
minor chiefs were more numerous than the champions whom Agamemnon led to
the Trojan war; and the assertion is perhaps as much and as little to be
credited as the catalogue of Greek warriors in the Iliad.
[Sidenote: Adhemar bishop of Puy.]
[Sidenote: Raymond of Toulouse.]
Foremost, by virtue of his title and office, among the leaders of the
southern bands, was the papal legate Adhemar (Aymer) bishop of Puy—a
leader rather as guiding the counsels of the army than as gathering
soldiers under his banner. A hundred thousand horse and foot attested, we
are told, the greatness, the wealth, and the zeal of Raymond, count of
Toulouse, lord of Auvergne and Languedoc, who had grown old in warfare,
and won for himself a mingled reputation for wisdom and haughtiness,
obstinacy and greed.
[Sidenote: Bohemond.]
Less tinged with the fanatical enthusiasm of his comrades, and certainly
more cool and deliberate in his ambition, Bohemond, son of Robert
Guiscard, whom we have seen fighting at Dyrrhachium and victorious at
Larissa (p. 23), looked to the crusade as a means by which he might
regain the vast regions extending from the Dalmatian coast to the
northern shores of the Egean. Nay, if we are to believe William of
Malmesbury, he urged Urban to set forward the enterprise for the very
purpose, partly, of thus recovering what he was pleased to regard as
his inheritance, and in part of enabling the pontiff to suppress all
opposition in Rome. Guiscard had left his Apulian domains to a younger
son, and Bohemond was resolved, it would seem, to add to his principality
of Tarentum a kingdom which would make him a formidable rival of the
Eastern emperor.
[Sidenote: Tancred.]
Far above his companion Bohemond, rises his cousin Tancred, the son of
the marquis Odo, surnamed the Good, and of Emma, the sister of Robert
Guiscard; and his reputation comes not from his wealth or the greatness
of his following, but from the qualities of mind and person which raised
him indefinitely nearer than his fellows to the standard of the ‘very
gentle perfect knight’ of Chaucer. In Tancred was seen the embodiment of
those peculiar sentiments and modes of thought which gave birth to the
crusades, and to which the crusades in their turn imparted marvellous
strength and splendour.
[Sidenote: Cause and effect of chivalry.]
[Sidenote: Knighthood.]
[Sidenote: Courtesy.]
When in the council of Clermont pope Urban dwelt on the cowardice and
ignoble fears of the Turks, he probably touched a chord which grated on
the more generous and enthusiastic amongst his hearers, and was in fact
speaking as a priest when with greater wisdom he should have used the
language of a general. There can be little doubt that the finer spirits
of the age were moved by the eager desire of rescuing a crowd of helpless
Christians from conquerors whose might it was impossible for them to
resist, and who were worthy antagonists even for the noblest knights
of Latin and Teutonic Christendom. The rescue of this feeble multitude
could be effected only at the cost of a great sacrifice,—the sacrifice
of houses and lands, of luxuries and pleasures: and the consciousness of
large sacrifices, cheerfully made for the weak and suffering, is amongst
the highest feelings which may be awakened in the human heart. Thus
in the most noble-minded and disinterested of the crusading champions
there was distinctly a combination of two ideas, seemingly discordant,
yet working together to produce one definite moral result. These were
the indignation with which they regarded the tyranny exercised over the
Christians of the East, and the involuntary respect and even admiration
which they felt for the conquerors as the most redoubtable warriors of
the age next to the foremost knights of Christendom. The former feeling
would impel them to the most desperate efforts for the recovery of the
Holy Land and the Holy Sepulchre; the latter would place checks dimly
recognized and not always heeded on the ferocious warfare with which
they would without scruple seek to sweep away all meaner or more savage
enemies. So far as he was actuated by such motives, the crusader was
cultivating in himself the germs of forbearance and toleration which
must at once to whatever extent soften the horrors of war and which
would in the end yield more solid and satisfying fruits. In this same
direction the influence of the Church was felt with constantly increasing
power. It had been her aim to curb, when she could not repress, the
violence of her children, and to establish by a solemn sanction that
Truce of God which prevented the practice of private war from becoming
a burden too heavy for the earth to bear. But in the expedition for the
delivery of the Holy Land war itself was sanctified; and the knight,
initiated even in past years by rites, which, heathen in their origin,
had been made sacred by the Church, was raised almost to the level of
the priest and the monk. Henceforth the young aspirant for the knightly
dignity and office was treated much as the catechumens had been treated
in the first Christian centuries. He must enter on his work with clean
thoughts and pure conscience, and the spotless garment of the catechumen,
purified by his long fast, was reproduced in the white robe which the
young squire put on after cleansing his body in the bath, while the
profession of baptism was repeated in the knightly vow which (after a
special confession of sin followed by absolution) pledged the young
man to deal justly, truly, and generously, defending the oppressed,
succouring the needy and helpless, and everywhere showing himself the
unsparing antagonist of all tyrants and evil-doers. In an especial degree
he was to be the champion of women, the protector of children; and he
rose from his knees before the assembled clergy, dubbed a knight by the
sword of his godfather in the names of God, of our Lady, and of St.
Michael, or St. George. The nearest to the heart of those who uttered
this formula, as to that of the young knight, was the name of the Virgin
Mother, whose name, it would seem, has fascinated multitudes without
curing them of savage treachery and bloodthirsty ferocity. In feudal
phrase she was his Lady (Notre Dame), as the crucified Jesus was his Lord
(Notre Seigneur); and the adoring and humble love which he bore for her
was held to sanctify and to be reflected in the devotion which he felt
for every noble lady and more especially for the one favoured dame who
became the idol of his heart, a star to be worshipped at a distance,
if not a queen at whose feet he might throw himself in an ecstacy of
passion. This being whom he delighted to picture to himself as the
peerless ideal of womanhood might be the wife of another man; and these
extravagant fancies produced not unfrequently the most lamentable and
ruinous results. But the knightly or chivalrous spirit, thus sometimes
led astray, tended nevertheless to impose moral checks on rude and savage
minds which had never felt them before; and the growth of this spirit was
ensured chiefly by the crusaders. The iniquities wrought by the soldiers
of the Cross were fearful indeed; but the horrors of the warfare were in
some small measure softened by the honour which the foremost warriors
on both sides paid each to the bravery and good faith of the other; and
this feeling expressed itself in a word which even now has by no means
lost its meaning. The quality of courtesy so named displayed itself in
the readiness to give place to another where strength and power might
have refused all concessions. It was closely allied to the Christian
qualities of meekness and mercy, and any approach to this heavenly
temper was a gain indeed in a brutalized and ferocious age. The highest
glory of the crusading knight was to be a mirror of courtesy: and this
glory is especially associated with the name of Tancred. Tancred lived,
fought, and conquered: the Rinaldo whom Tasso paints in his epic poem
on the deliverance of Jerusalem is a being of cloudland like the Greek
Achilleus, the Trojan Hektor, and the Persian Rustam.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1096. August. Departure of the main army of the
crusaders under Godfrey.]
The miserable remnant of 3,000 men who escaped from the field of blood
before the city of the Seljukian Sultan (p. 41), found a refuge in
Byzantine territory about the time when the better appointed armies
of the crusaders were setting off on their eastward journey. The most
disciplined of these troops set out with a vast following from the banks
of the Meuse and the Moselle under Godfrey of Bouillon who led them
safely and without opposition to the Hungarian border. Here the armies
of Hungary barred the way against the advance of a host at whose hands
they dreaded a repetition of the havoc wrought by the lawless bands of
Peter the Hermit and his self-chosen colleagues. Three weeks passed away
in vain attempts to get over the difficulty. The Hungarian king demanded
as a hostage Baldwin, the brother of the general: the demand was refused,
and Godfrey put him to shame by surrendering himself. He asked only for
a free passage and a free market; but although these were granted, it
was not in his power to prevent some disorder and some depredations as
his army or horde passed through the country. The mischief might have
been much worse, had not the Hungarian cavalry, acting professedly as
a friendly escort but really as cautious warders kept close to the
crusading hosts.
[Sidenote: Captivity of Hugh of Vermandois.]
At length they reached the gates of Philippopolis, and here Godfrey
learnt that Hugh of Vermandois, whose coming had been announced to the
Greek emperor Alexios by four-and-twenty knights in golden armour, and
who styled himself the brother of the king of kings and lord of all the
Frankish hosts, was a prisoner within the walls of Constantinople. With
Robert of Normandy and Robert of Flanders, with Stephen of Chartres and
some lesser chiefs, Hugh had chosen to make his way through Italy; and
the charms of that voluptuous land had a greater effect, it seems, in
breaking up and corrupting their forces than the delights of Capua had
in weakening the soldiers of Hannibal. With little regard to order the
chiefs determined to cross the sea as best they might. Hugh embarked
at Bari; and if we may believe Anna Comnena, the historian and the
worshipper of her father Alexios, his fleet was broken by a tempest
which shattered his own ship on the coast between Palos and Dyrrhachium
(Durazzo), of which John Comnenos, the nephew of the emperor, was at
this time the governor. The Frank chief was here detained until the good
pleasure of Alexios should be known. That wary and cunning prince saw
at once how much might be made of his prisoner, who was by his orders
conducted with careful respect and ceremony to the capital. Kept here
really as a hostage, but welcomed to outward seeming as a friend, Hugh
was so completely won by the charm of manner which Alexios well knew
how and when to put on, that, paying him homage and declaring himself
his man, he promised to do what he could to induce others to follow his
example.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1096. Christmas. Arrival of Godfrey before the walls of
Constantinople.]
[Sidenote: Policy of the emperor Alexios.]
From Philippopolis Godfrey sent ambassadors to Alexios, demanding the
immediate surrender of Hugh. The request was refused, and Godfrey resumed
his march, treating the land through which he passed as an enemy’s
country, until by way of Adrianople he at length appeared before the
walls of the capital at Christmastide, 1096. The fears of Alexios were
aroused by the sight of a host so vast and so formidable: they quickened
into terror as he thought of the armies which were still on their way
under the command of Bohemond and Tancred. Of Godfrey, beyond the fact of
his mission as a crusader, he knew little or nothing: but in Bohemond he
saw one who claimed as his inheritance no small portion of his empire.
This gathering of myriads, whom a false step on his part might convert
into open enemies, was the result of his own entreaties urged through
his envoys before Urban II. in the council of Piacenza; and his mind was
divided between a feverish anxiety to hurry them on to their destination
and so to rid himself of their hateful presence, and the desire to retain
a hold not only on the crusading chiefs but on any conquests which they
might make in Syria.
[Sidenote: Compact between Alexios and the crusaders.]
Hugh was sent back to Godfrey’s camp; but the quarrel was patched up,
rather than ended. It was easier to rouse suspicion and jealousy than
to restore friendship. But it was of the first importance for Alexios
that he should secure the homage of the princes already gathered round
his capital before the arrival of his ancient enemy Bohemond. In this he
succeeded, and a compact was made by which Alexios pledged them his word
that he would supply them with food and aid them in their eastward march,
and would protect all pilgrims passing through his dominions. On the
other hand the crusading chiefs, as already subjects of other sovereigns,
gave their fealty to the emperor as their liege lord only for the time
during which they might remain within his borders, and undertook to
restore to him such of their conquests as had been recently wrested from
the empire. In order to secure this treaty Alexios had been compelled
to go through the fatigue of interminable audiences with the Western
warriors and to put up with not a little insolence. The effrontery of
a crusader, who flinging himself on the imperial throne declared that
he saw no reason for standing while one rustic remained seated, was
denounced as intolerable rudeness even by his companions; but Robert,
count of Paris, if indeed it was he, closed a brief career not many weeks
later, and is more conspicuous in modern romance than in the pages of
mediæval historians.
[Sidenote: Homage of the crusaders to Alexios.]
The spirit of Bohemond was stirred deeply within him when on reaching
Constantinople he found that his colleagues, instead of remaining
independent chiefs, had made themselves vassals of the Byzantine
monarch. But Alexios was vigorously aided by Robert of Flanders, whose
friendly offices were the result of an alliance made with his father
eight years before; and Bohemond soon saw that he must in appearance
follow the example of his comrades, whatever course it might suit him
to take hereafter. He became the guest of the emperor, listened with
complacency to his flatteries, accepted a magnificent gift or bribe,
and accompanied his submission with a request for the office of Grand
Domestic, or general of the East. The emperor put him off with the
promise of an independent principality, and turned with more genuine
warmth to the honest simplicity of Godfrey. This disinterested crusader
was anxious only to fulfill his vows; and Alexios felt that he was making
no sacrifice and entering into no inconvenient engagements by adopting
him as his son.
[Sidenote: Disastrous march of Raymond of Toulouse to Constantinople.]
The policy and the bribes of Alexios had overcome the opposition of
Bohemond. He was to experience a stouter resistance from Raymond of
Toulouse, who, though he had been the first to enlist, was the last to
set out on his crusade. He should never make another journey, he said,
and he was determined to be well prepared. Wishing to avoid, so far
as he could, the lines of march chosen by the chiefs who had preceded
him, he took the road through Lombardy. Thus far his march was easily
accomplished: but things wore a different look when he reached the savage
mountains and desolate valleys of Dalmatia and Slavonia. The people had
driven their cattle (and their cattle formed practically their whole
property) into inaccessible glens: and instead of plundering others the
crusaders found themselves harassed and their stragglers cut off by
thieves and murderers. Raymond retaliated by cutting off the hands and
noses of all who were taken prisoners and putting out their eyes; and the
wrath of the natives was roused to desperate resistance. At Scodra he
entered into some sort of agreement with the Servian chief Bodin; but the
country could yield little for the support of this vast army, which was
compelled to struggle onwards under dire difficulties. It is astonishing
to hear that Raymond could still speak of himself as the leader of a
hundred thousand warriors, when he refused flatly to do homage to the
Greek emperor.
[Sidenote: Refusal of Raymond to do homage.]
The count of Toulouse scarcely regarded himself as the vassal even of the
French king. He was ready, he said, to be the friend of Alexios on equal
terms; but he would not declare himself to be his man. On this point he
was immovable, although Bohemond tried the effect of a threat, which was
never forgiven, that if the quarrel came to blows, he should be found
on the side of the emperor. But Alexios soon saw that in Raymond he had
to deal with an enthusiast as sincere and persistent as Godfrey. He
took his measures accordingly, and winning the heart of the old warrior,
although he failed to compel his obedience, he confessed to him his
dislike of the rude and noisy habits of the Franks and his deep-seated
fears of Bohemond. The admiration of Anna Comnena was as great as the
esteem professed for him by her father. Raymond in her fervent language
shone among the barbarians as the sun among the stars of heaven.
[Sidenote: Conduct of Alexios to the crusaders.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1097. March.]
While Alexios was thus busied in dealing with Godfrey and Raymond,
Bohemond and Tancred, he was not less anxiously occupied with the task of
sending across the Bosporos the swarms which might soon become an army
of devouring locusts round his own capital. It was easier to give them
a welcome than to get rid of them: and more than two months had passed
since Christmas, when the followers of Godfrey found themselves on the
soil of Asia. It was well to place even a narrow strait of sea between
himself and these dangerous friends, who had threatened him at first with
all the horrors of savage war. The rumour had got abroad that Alexios
meant to hem them in among marshes, and leave them there to starve; and
an assault of the crusaders on the suburbs showed the emperor what he
might expect, if these suspicions were not quieted. Probably he had not
intended to entrap them to their death: but he had felt less scruple
in submitting them to cheatings with debased coin and to extortions
which carried with them no sense of novelty for his own people. Even
these he found it politic to abandon, and so zealously did he employ an
opposite method that for the time the crusaders seemed to have become his
mercenaries.
[Sidenote: Passage of the crusaders across the Bosporos.]
Godfrey’s men had no sooner been landed on the eastern side of the
Bosporos, than all the vessels which had transported them were brought
back to the western shore. With great astuteness, and at the cost of
large gifts, Alexios in like manner freed the neighbourhood of his
capital from the invading multitudes. As fast as they came, they were
hurried across, and the emperor breathed more freely when, on the feast
of Pentecost, not a single Latin pilgrim remained on the European shore.
[Sidenote: Thorough antagonism between the crusaders and the Greeks.]
[Sidenote: Contrast between the Greek and Latin clergy.]
The danger of conflict had throughout been imminent; and the danger
arose, not so much from the fact that the crusaders were armed men,
marching through the country of professed allies, but from the thorough
antagonism between Greeks and Latins in modes of thought and habits of
life, in the first notions of civilization, law, and duty. For the Greeks
feudalism was a thing of the remote past; in other words, was a thing
unknown. To get at a state resembling that of Western Europe they would
have had to go back for nearly twenty centuries—to the days of Solon and
of the Thessalian and Theban nobility, who were among the most efficient
allies of Xerxes. For the crusading armies or rather for their chiefs
(of the common herd there was no need to take any account), nothing was
so hateful as a central authority which pressed on all orders in the
state alike: nothing was so precious as local tyranny and the right
of private war, which respected neither person nor property. For the
subjects of the Eastern empire the protection of person and property was
everything, and in order to secure this they were willing to put up with
a large amount of oppression and of corruption in their governors. In a
sense not so high perhaps as that which the words bore in the days of
Herodotos, law was still their king; and of public law the Latins could
scarcely be said to have any conception. Nor must we forget the vast gulf
which separated the Eastern from the Western clergy. The latter were now
becoming well broken into the yoke of celibacy which had been finally
thrust upon them by Damiani and Hildebrand; for the former marriage was
a condition for the very reception of their orders. The Latin clergy had
by this change been converted into a close order or caste, which looked
up to the Roman pontiff as their head and hated the thought of allegiance
to any temporal ruler. This empire within an empire was an idea which had
not dawned on the Greek or the Eastern mind; and the clergy of the West
despised their brethren of the East for their cowardly submission to the
secular arm. These, in their turn, shrunk with horror from the sight of
bishops, priests, and monks riding with blood-stained weapons over fields
of battle, and exhibiting at other times an ignorance equal to their
ferocity. Harmony between nations and races under such conditions is as
hopeless as the voluntary mingling of oil and water; and the result of
contact was an exasperation of the suspicion, jealousy, and hatred which
the one side felt instinctively for the supposed treachery, lying, and
violence of the other.
[Sidenote: Numbers of the crusaders.]
Thus was gathered on the eastern shores of the Hellespont and the
Bosporos a host, we may well believe more vast than that which Xerxes
drove before him for the invasion of Europe, and leaving behind it in
utter insignificance the scanty force with which Alexander attempted and
achieved the conquest of Asia. When tribes or a nation pour out their
whole population, men, women, and children alike, there is practically no
limit to the numbers which may be set in motion; nor is it any tax on
our credulity to believe that a hundred thousand horsemen, fully armed
in the light coats of mail worn during the first crusading age, were
marshalled on the Bithynian plains, even if we put aside as an absurd
exaggeration the notion of the chaplain of Count Baldwin, that the whole
body of the crusaders amounted to not less than six millions.
[Sidenote: June. Siege and fall of Nice (Nikaia).]
[Sidenote: July 4. Battle of Dorylaion.]
Their strength and valour were soon to be tested. They were now face
to face with the Turks on whose cowardice Urban II. had enlarged with
so much complacency before the council of Clermont. The Sultan David,
or Kilidje Arslan (p. 41), placed his family and treasures in his
capital city of Nice (Nikaia), and retreated with 50,000 horsemen to the
mountains, whence he swooped down from time to time on the outposts of
the Christians. By these his city was formally invested; and for seven
weeks it was assailed to little purpose by the old instruments of Roman
warfare, while some of the besiegers shot their weapons from the hill on
which were mouldering the bones of the fanatic followers of Peter. It was
protected to the west by the Askanian lake, and so long as the Turks had
command of this lake they felt themselves safe. But Alexios sent thither
on sledges a large number of boats, and the city, subjected to a double
blockade, submitted to the emperor, who was in no way anxious to see the
crusaders masters of the place. The crusaders were making ready for the
last assault, when they saw the imperial banner floating on the walls.
Their disappointment at the escape of the miscreants, or unbelievers,
for so they delighted to speak of them, was vented in threats which
seemed to bode a renewal of the old troubles: but Alexios, with gifts,
which added force to his words, professed that his only desire now, as
it had been, was to forward them safely on their journey. Nor had they
to go many stages before they found themselves again confronted with
their adversary. The conflict took place near the Phrygian Dorylaion,
and seemed at first to portend dire defeat to the crusaders. More than
once the issue of the day seemed to be turned by the indomitable personal
bravery of the Norman Robert, of Tancred, and of Bohemond; and when even
those seemed likely to be borne down, they received timely succours from
Godfrey, and Hugh of Vermandois, from bishop Adhemar of Puy and from
Raymond, count of Toulouse. Still the Turks held out, and it seemed
likely that they would long hold out, when the appearance of the last
division of Raymond’s army filled them with the fear that a new host was
upon them.
[Sidenote: March to Cogni and the Pisidian Antioch.]
[Sidenote: Quarrel between Baldwin and Tancred at Tarsus.]
The crusaders had won a considerable victory. Three thousand knights
belonging to the enemy had been slain, and Kilidje Arslan was hurrying
away to enlist the services of his kinsmen. Meanwhile the Latin hosts
were sweeping onwards, passing Cogni (Ikonion, Iconium), Erekli
(Herakleia), and the Pisidian Antioch. Their dangers were great; their
sufferings terrible. The son of Kilidje Arslan had hurried on before them
with ten thousand horsemen, and declared before the gates of each city
that they came as conquerors, not as fugitives. They had ravaged the
lands as they came along; in the town they sacked the churches, plundered
the houses, emptied the granaries; and the crusaders who followed them
had to journey over a naked soil under the burning Phrygian sun. Hundreds
died from the heat: and dogs or goats took the place of the baggage
horses which had perished. At length Tancred with his troop found
himself before Tarsus, the birthplace and the home of that single-hearted
apostle who long ago had preached a gospel strangely unlike the creed
of the crusaders. Following rapidly behind him, Baldwin saw with keen
jealousy the banner of the Italian chief floating on its towers, and
insisted on taking the precedence. Tancred pleaded the choice of the
people and his own promise to protect them; but the intrigues of Baldwin
changed their humour, and the rejection of Tancred by the men of Tarsus
was followed by an attempt at private war between Tancred and Baldwin,
in which the troops of Tancred were overborne. So early was the first
harvest of murderous discord reaped among the holy warriors of the cross.
It was ruin, however, to stay where they were; and the main army again
began its march, to undergo once more the old monotony of hardship and
peril.
[Sidenote: Conquest of Edessa by Baldwin.]
A very small force would have sufficed to disorganize and rout them as
they clambered over the defiles of Mount Taurus; nor could Raymond,
recovering from a terrible illness, or Godfrey, suffering from wounds
inflicted by a bear, have done much to help them. But for the present
their enemies were dismayed; and Baldwin, brother of Godfrey, hastened
with eagerness to obey a summons which besought him to aid the Greek or
Armenian tyrant of Edessa. As Alexios had done to his brother, so this
chief welcomed Baldwin as his son; but Baldwin, having once entered into
the city, cared nothing for the means which had brought him thither,
and the death of his adoptive father was followed by the establishment
at Edessa of a Latin principality which lasted for fifty-four, or,
as some have thought, forty-seven years. Baldwin had anticipated the
unconditional surrender of Samosata; but the Turkish governor had some of
the Edessenes in his power, and he refused to give up the city except on
the payment of ten thousand gold pieces. The Turk shortly afterwards fell
into Baldwin’s hands, and was put to death.
[Sidenote: Arrival of the crusaders before the Syrian Antioch.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1097. Oct.]
Meanwhile the main army of the crusaders was advancing towards the Syrian
capital, that ancient and luxurious city whose fame had gone over the
whole Roman world for its magnificence, its unbounded wealth, its soft
delights, and its unholy pleasures. The days of its greatest splendour
had passed away. Its walls were partially in ruins; its buildings were in
some parts crumbling away or had already fallen; but against assailants
utterly ignorant and awkward in all that relates to the blockade of
cities it was still a formidable position. Nor could they invest it until
they had passed the iron bridge (so called from its iron-plated gates) of
nine stone arches, which spanned the stream of the Ifrin at a distance of
nine miles from the city. This bridge was carried by the impetuous charge
of Robert of Normandy, aided by the more steady efforts of Godfrey; and
in the language of an age which delighted in round numbers, a hundred
thousand warriors hurried across to seize the splendid prize which now
seemed almost within their grasp.
[Sidenote: Siege of Antioch.]
But the city was in the hands of men who had been long accustomed to
despise the Greeks, and who had not yet learnt to respect the valour
of the Latins. Preparing himself for a resolute defence, the Seljukian
governor Baghasian had sent away, as useless, if not mischievous, most
of the Christians within the town; and the crusading chiefs had begun
to discuss the prudence of postponing all operations till the spring,
when Raymond of Toulouse with some other chiefs insisted that delay
would imply fear, and that the imputation of cowardice would ensure the
paralysis of their enterprise. The city was therefore at once invested,
so far as the forces of the crusaders could suffice to encircle it;
and a siege began which in the eyes of the military historian must be
absolutely without interest, and of which the issue was decided by
paroxysms of fanatical vehemence on the one side, and by lack not of
bravery but of generalship on the other. Of the eastern and northern
walls the blockade was complete; of the west it was partial; and the
failure to invest a portion of the western wall, with two out of the five
gates of the city, left the movements of the Turks in this direction free.
[Sidenote: Folly of the besiegers.]
But the besiegers were in no hurry to begin the work of death. The wealth
of the harvest and the vintage spread before them its irresistible
temptations, and the herds feeding in the rich pastures seemed to promise
an endless feast. The cattle, the corn, and the wine were alike wasted
with besotted folly, while the Turks within the walls received tidings,
it is said, of all that passed in the crusading camp from some Greek and
Armenian Christians to whom they allowed free egress and ingress. Of this
knowledge they availed themselves in planning the sallies by which they
caused great distress to the besiegers, whose clumsy engines and devices
seemed to produce no result beyond the waste of time, and who felt
perhaps that they had done something when they blocked up the gate of the
bridge with huge stones dug from the neighbouring quarries.
[Sidenote: Famine in the crusading camp.]
Three months passed away; and the crusaders found themselves not
conquerors but in desperate straits from famine. The winter rains had
turned the land round their camp into a swamp, and lack of food left
them more and more unable to resist the pestilential diseases which were
rapidly thinning their numbers. A foraging expedition under Bohemond and
Tancred filled the camp with food: it was again recklessly wasted. The
second famine scared away Tatikios, the lieutenant of the Greek emperor
Alexios; but the crusading chiefs were perhaps still more disgusted
by the desertion of William of Melun, called the Carpenter, from the
sledge-hammer blows which he dealt out in battle. Hunger obtained a
victory even over the hermit Peter, who was stealing away with William of
Melun, when he with his companion was caught by Tancred and brought back
to the tent of Bohemond.
[Sidenote: Arrival of envoys from the Fatimite sultan of Egypt.]
For a moment the look of things was changed by the arrival of ambassadors
from Egypt. To the Fatimite caliph of that country the progress of the
crusading arms had thus far brought with it but little dissatisfaction.
The humiliation of the Seljukian Turks could not fail to bring gain to
himself, if the flood of Latin conquests could be checked and turned back
in time. His generals besieged Jerusalem and Tyre; and when the Fatimite
once more ruled in Palestine, his envoys hastened to the crusaders’
camp to announce the deliverance of the Holy Land from its oppressors,
to assure to all unarmed and peaceable pilgrims a month’s unmolested
sojourn in Jerusalem, and to promise them his aid during their march, on
condition that they should acknowledge his supremacy within the limits of
his Syrian empire.
[Sidenote: Their terms rejected by the crusaders.]
The arguments and threats of the caliph were alike thrown away. The
Latin chiefs disclaimed all interest in the feuds and quarrels of rival
sultans and in the fortunes of Mahomedan sects. God Himself had destined
Jerusalem for the Christians, and if any held it who were not Christians,
these were usurpers whose resistance must be punished by their expulsion
or their death. The envoys departed not encouraged by this answer, and
still more perplexed by the appearance of plenty and by the magnificence
of a camp in which they had expected to see a terrible spectacle of
disorder and misery.
[Sidenote: Fierce warfare between the Christians and the Turks.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1098. March.]
The resolute persistence of the besiegers convinced Baghasian of the need
of reinforcements. These were hastening to him from Cæsarea, Aleppo, and
other places, when they were cut off by Bohemond and Raymond, who sent a
multitude of heads to the envoys of the Fatimite caliph, and discharged
many hundreds from their engines into the city of Antioch. The Turks
had their opportunity for reprisals when the arrival of some Pisan and
Genoese ships at the mouth of the Orontes drew off the greater part of
the besieging army. The crusaders were returning with provisions and
arms, when their enemies started upon them from an ambuscade. The battle
was fierce: but the defeat of Raymond which threatened dire disaster was
changed into victory on the arrival of Godfrey and the Norman Robert,
whose exploits equalled or surpassed, if we are to believe the story,
even those of Arthur, Lancelot, or Tristram. Hundreds, if not thousands,
of Turks fell. Their bodies were buried by their comrades in the cemetery
without the walls: the Christians dug them up, severed the heads from the
trunks, and paraded the ghastly trophies on their pikes, not forgetting
to send a goodly number to the Egyptian caliph, by way of showing how his
Seljukian friends or enemies had fared. The picture is disgusting; but if
we shut our eyes to these loathsome details, the truth of the history is
gone. We are dealing with the wars of savages, and it is right that we
should know this.
[Sidenote: Plan of Bohemond for the reduction of Antioch.]
The next scene exhibits Godfrey and Bohemond in fierce quarrel about a
splendid tent, which, being intended as a gift for the former, had been
seized by an Armenian chief and sent to the latter. But there was now
more serious business on hand. Rumour spoke of the near approach of a
Persian army, and the besieged under the plea of wishing to arrange terms
of capitulation obtained a truce which they sought probably only for the
sake of gaining time. The days passed by, but no offers were made; and
their disposition was shown by seizing a crusading knight in the groves
near the city, and tearing his body in pieces. The Latins returned with
increased fury to the siege: but the defence, although more feeble,
was still protracted, and Bohemond began to feel not only that fraud
might succeed where force had failed, but that from fraud he might reap
not safety merely but wealth and greatness. His plans were laid with a
renegade Christian named Phirouz (high in the favour of the governor),
with whom he had come into contact either during the truce or in some
other way. By splendid promises he ensured the zealous aid of his new
ally, and then came forward in the council with the assurance that he
could place the city in their hands, but that he could do this only on
condition that he should rule in Antioch as Baldwin ruled in Edessa. His
claim was angrily opposed by the Provençal Raymond: but this opposition
was overruled, and it was resolved that the plan should be carried out at
once.
[Sidenote: June. Betrayal of Antioch to Bohemond.]
There was need for so doing. Rumours spread within the city that some
attempt was to be made to betray the place to the besiegers, and hints or
open accusations pointed out Phirouz as the traitor. Like other traitors,
the renegade thought it best to anticipate the charge by urging that the
guards of the towers should on the very next day be changed. His proposal
was received as indubitable proof of his innocence and his faithfulness;
but he had made up his mind that Antioch should fall that night, and
that night by means of a rope ladder Bohemond with about sixty followers
(the ropes broke before more could ascend) climbed up the wall. Seizing
ten towers of which all the guards were killed, they opened a gate, and
the Christian host rushed in. The banner of Bohemond rose on one of the
towers; the trumpets sounded for the onset, and a carnage began in which
at first the assailants took no heed to distinguish between the Christian
and the Turk. In the awful confusion of the moment some of the besieged
made their way to the citadel, and there shut themselves in, ready
to resist to the death. Of the rest few escaped: ten thousand, it is
said, were massacred. Baghasian with some friends passed out beyond the
besiegers’ lines; but fainting from loss of blood he fell from his horse,
and his companions hurried on. A Syrian Christian heard his groans, and
striking off his head, carried the prize to the camp of the conquerors.
Phirouz lived to be a second time a renegade, and to close his career as
a thief.
[Sidenote: Arrival of the Persians under Kerboga.]
The victory was for the crusaders a change from famine to abundance; and
their feasting was accompanied by the wildest riot and the most filthy
debauchery. But if heedless waste may have been one of the most venial
of their sins, it was the greatest of their blunders. The reports which
spoke of the approach of the Persians were not false. The Turks within
the citadel suddenly found that they were rather besiegers than besieged,
and that the Christians were hemmed in by the myriads of Kerboga prince
of Mosul and the warriors of Kilidje Arslan. The old horrors of famine
were now repeated, but in greater intensity; and the doom of the Latin
host seemed to be sealed.
[Sidenote: Desertion of Stephen of Chartres.]
Stephen count of Chartres had deserted his companions before the fall of
the city; others now followed his example, and with him set out on their
return to Europe. In Phrygia Stephen encountered the emperor Alexios, who
was marching to the aid of the crusaders, not only with a Greek army, but
with a force of well appointed pilgrims who had reached Constantinople
after the departure of Godfrey and his fellows. The story told by Stephen
drove out of his head every thought except that of his own safety. The
order for retreat was given; and the pilgrim warriors not less than
the Greeks were compelled to turn their faces westwards. In vain Guy,
a brother of Bohemond, pleaded his duty and his vow. His words were
unheeded; and his indignation wrung from him the desperate assertion that
if the Divine Being were omnipotent, He would not suffer such things to
be done.
[Sidenote: Desperate straits of the crusaders in Antioch.]
[Sidenote: The discovery of the Holy Lance.]
In Antioch the crusading soldiers were fast sinking into utter despair.
Discipline had well nigh come to an end, and so obstinate was their
refusal to bear arms any longer, that Bohemond resolved to burn them out
of their quarters. These were consumed by the flames, which spread so
rapidly as to fill him with fear that he had destroyed not only their
dwellings but his whole principality. His experiment brought the men
back to their duty: but so despondingly was their work done that but
for some signal succour the end, it was manifest, must soon come. In a
credulous age such succour at the darkest hour, if obtained at all, will
generally be obtained through miracle. A Lombard priest came forward, to
whom St. Ambrose of Milan had declared in a vision that the third year
of the crusade should see the conquest of Jerusalem; another had seen
the Saviour Himself, attended by his Virgin-Mother and the Prince of
the Apostles, had heard from his lips a stern rebuke of the crusaders
for yielding to the seductions of pagan women (as if the profession of
Christianity altered the colour and the guilt of a vice), and lastly had
received the distinct assurance that in five days they should have the
help which they needed. The hopes of the crusaders were roused; with
hope came a return of vigorous energy; and Peter Barthelemy, chaplain to
Raymond of Toulouse, seized the opportunity for recounting a vision which
was to be something more than a dream. To him St. Andrew had revealed
the fact that in the church of St. Peter lay hidden the steel head of
the spear which had pierced the side of the Redeemer as He hung upon the
cross; and that Holy Lance should win them victory over all their enemies
as surely as the spear which imparted irresistible power to the Knight
of the Sangreal. After two days of special devotion they were to search
for the long-lost weapon: on the third day the workmen began to dig; but
until the sun had set they toiled in vain. The darkness of night made it
easier for the chaplain to play the part which Sir Walter Scott, in the
‘Antiquary,’ assigns to Herman Dousterswivel in the ruins of St. Ruth.
Barefooted and with a single garment the priest went down into the pit.
For a time the strokes of his spade were heard, and then the sacred
relic was found, carefully wrapped in a veil of silk and gold. The priest
proclaimed his discovery; the people rushed into the church; and from the
church throughout the city spread the flame of a fierce enthusiasm.
[Sidenote: Fate of the discoverer.]
Nine or ten months later Peter Barthelemy paid the penalty of his life
for his fraud or his superstition. A bribe taken by his master Raymond
brought that chief into ill odour with his comrades, and let loose
against his chaplain the tongue of Arnold, the chaplain of Bohemond.
Raymond had traded on fresh visions of his clerk; and Arnold boldly
attacked him in his citadel by denying the genuineness of the Holy Lance.
Peter appealed to the ordeal of fire. He passed through the flames,
as it seemed, unhurt. The bystanders pressed to feel his flesh, and
were vehement in their rejoicings at the result which vindicated his
integrity. He had really received fatal injuries. Twelve days afterwards
he died, and Raymond suffered greatly in his dignity and his influence.
[Sidenote: Battle of Antioch.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1098. June 28.]
[Sidenote: Defeat of Kerboga.]
[Sidenote: Antioch made a principality for Bohemond.]
The infidel was doomed; but the crusaders resolved to give him one chance
of escape. Peter the Hermit was sent as their envoy to Kerboga to offer
the alternative of departure from a land which St. Peter had bestowed on
the faithful, or of baptism which should leave him master of the city
and territory of Antioch. The reply was short and decisive. The Turk
would not embrace an idolatry which he hated and despised, nor would he
give up soil which belonged to him by right of conquest. The report of
the hermit raised the spirit of the crusaders to fever heat; and on the
feast of St. Peter and St. Paul they marched out in twelve divisions,
in remembrance of the mission of the twelve apostles, while Raymond of
Toulouse remained to prevent the escape of the Turks shut up in the
citadel. The Holy Lance was borne by the papal legate, Adhemar, bishop of
Puy; and the morning air laden with the perfume of roses was now regarded
as a sign assuring them of the divine favour. They were prepared to see
good omens in everything; and they went in full confidence that departed
saints would, as they had been told, take part in the battle and smite
down the infidel. The fight (one of brute force on the Christian side, of
some little skill as well as strength on the other) had gone on for some
time when such help seemed to become needful. Tancred had hurried to the
aid of Bohemond who was grievously pressed by Kilidje Arslan; and Kerboga
was bearing heavily on Godfrey and Hugh of Vermandois, when, clothed in
white armour and riding on white horses, some human forms were seen on
the neighbouring heights. ‘The saints are coming to your aid,’ shouted
the bishop of Puy, and the people saw in these radiant strangers the
martyrs St. George, St. Maurice, and St. Theodore. Without awaiting their
nearer approach the crusaders turned on the enemy with a force and fury
which were now irresistible. Their cavalry could do little. Two hundred
horses only remained of the sixty thousand which had filled the plain a
few months before. But the hedge of spears advanced like a wall of iron,
and the Turks gave way, broke, and fled. It was rout, not retreat; and
with the crusaders victory was followed by the massacre of men, women,
and children. The garrison in the citadel at once surrendered. Some
declared themselves Christians and were baptized; those who refused to
abandon Islam were taken to the nearest Mohamedan territory. The city was
the prize of Bohemond; and in his keeping it remained, although Raymond
of Toulouse had made an effort to seize it by hoisting his banner on
the walls. The work of pillage being ended, the churches were cleansed
and repaired, and their altars blazed with golden spoils taken from the
infidel. The Greek patriarch was again seated on his throne: but he held
his office at the good pleasure of the Latins, and two years later he was
made to give place to Bernard, a chaplain of the bishop of Puy.
[Sidenote: Mission of Hugh of Vermandois to Constantinople.]
Ten months had passed away after the conquest of Antioch when the main
body of the crusading army set out on its march to Jerusalem. They had
wished to depart at once, but their chiefs dreaded to encounter waterless
wastes at the end of a Syrian summer, and for the present they were
content to send Hugh of Vermandois and Baldwin of Hainault as envoys
to the Greek emperor, to reproach him with his remissness or his want
of faith. But the miseries endured by Christians and Turks were the
pleasantest tidings in the ears of Alexios, for in the weakening of both
lay his own strength; and he saw with satisfaction the departure of Hugh,
not for Antioch, but for Europe, whither Stephen of Chartres had preceded
him.
[Sidenote: Death of Adhemar, bishop of Puy.]
[Sidenote: Siege and capture of Marra.]
Winter came; but the chiefs still lingered at Antioch. Some were
occupied in expeditions against neighbouring cities: but a more pressing
care was the plague which punished the foulness and disorder of the
pilgrims. A band of 1,500 Germans, recently landed in strong health and
full equipments, were all, it is said, cut off; and among the victims
the most lamented perhaps was the papal legate Adhemar. A feeling of
discouragement was again spreading through the army generally. The chiefs
vainly entreated the pope to visit the city where the disciples of St.
Peter first received the Christian name; the people were disheartened
by the animosities and the selfish or crooked policy of their chiefs.
Raymond still hankered after the principality of Antioch, and insisted
that Bohemond and his people, like the men of the three trans-jordanic
tribes in the days of Joshua, should share in the last great enterprise
of the crusade. More disgraceful than these feuds were the scenes
witnessed during the siege and after the conquest of Marra. Heedlessness
and waste soon brought the assailants to devour the flesh of dogs and of
human beings. The bodies of Turks were torn from their sepulchres, ripped
up for the gold which they were supposed to have swallowed, and the
fragments cooked and eaten. Of the besieged many slew themselves to avoid
falling into the hands of the Christians; to some Bohemond, tempted by a
large bribe, gave an assurance of safety. When the massacre had begun, he
ordered these to be brought forward. The weak and old he slaughtered; the
rest he sent to the slave-markets of Antioch.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1099. May march of the crusaders from Antioch.]
A weak attempt made by Alexios to detain the crusaders only spurred them
to more vigorous efforts. They had already left Antioch, and Laodicea
was in their hands, when he desired them to await his coming in June.
The chiefs, remembering the departure of Tatikios (p. 62) with his
Byzantine troops for Cyprus, retorted that he had broken his compact,
and had therefore no further claims on their obedience. Hastening on
their way, they crossed the plain of Berytos (Beyrout), overlooked by
the eternal snows of Lebanon, along the narrow strip of land whence the
great Phenician cities had sent their seamen and their colonists, with
all the wealth of the East, to the shores of the Adriatic and the gates
of the Mediterranean. Having reached Jaffa, they turned inland to Ramlah,
a town sixteen miles only from Jerusalem. Two days later the crusaders
came in sight of the Holy City, the object of their long pilgrimage, the
cause of wretchedness and death to millions. As their eyes rested on the
scene hallowed to them through all the associations of their faith, the
crusaders passed in an instant from fierce enthusiasm to a humiliation
which showed itself in sighs and tears. All fell on their knees, to kiss
the sacred earth and to pour forth thanksgivings that they had been
suffered to look upon the desire of their eyes. Putting aside their
armour and their weapons, they advanced in pilgrim’s garb and with bare
feet towards the spot which the Saviour had trodden in the hours of his
agony and his passion.
[Sidenote: June. Siege of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: July. Storming of the city.]
But before their feelings of devotion could be indulged, there was other
work to be done. The chiefs took up their posts on those sides from
which the nature of the ground gave most hope of a successful assault.
On the northern side were Godfrey and Tancred, Robert of Flanders, and
Robert of Normandy; on the west Raymond with his Provencals. On the
fifth day, without siege instruments, with only one ladder, and trusting
to mere weight, the crusaders made a desperate assault upon the walls.
Some succeeded in reaching the summit, and the very rashness of their
attack struck terror for a moment into their enemies. But the garrison
soon rallied, and the invaders were all driven back or hurled from
the ramparts. The task, it was manifest, must be undertaken in a more
formal manner. Siege engines must be made, and the palm and olive of
the immediate neighbourhood would not supply fit materials for their
construction. These were obtained from the woods of Shechem, a distance
of thirty miles; and the work of preparation was carried on under the
guidance of Gaston of Bearn by the crews of some Genoese vessels which
had recently anchored at Jaffa. So passed away more than thirty days,
days of intense suffering to the besiegers. At Antioch they had been
distressed chiefly by famine: in place of this wretchedness they had here
the greater miseries of thirst. The enemy had carefully destroyed every
place which might serve as a receptacle of water; and in seeking for it
over miles of desolate country they were exposed to the harassing attacks
of Moslem horsemen. Nor had visions and miracles improved the morals
or discipline of the camp; and the ghost of Adhemar of Puy appeared to
rebuke the horrible sins which were drawing down upon them the judgments
of the Almighty. Better service was done by the generosity of Tancred,
who made up his quarrel with Raymond; and the enthusiasm of the crusaders
was again roused by the preaching of Arnold (p. 68) and the hermit Peter.
The narrative of the siege of Jericho in the book of Joshua suggested
probably the procession in which the clergy singing hymns preceded
the laity round the walls of the city. The Saracens on the ramparts
mocked their devotions by throwing dirt upon crucifixes: but they paid
a terrible price for these insults. On the next day the final assault
began, and was carried on through the day with the same monotony of brute
force and carnage which marked all the operations of this merciless war.
The darkness of night brought no rest. The actual combat was suspended,
but the besieged were incessantly occupied in repairing the breaches made
by the assailants, while these were busied in making their dispositions
for the last mortal conflict. In the midst of that deadly struggle, when
it seemed that the Cross must after all go down before the Crescent, a
knight was seen on Mount Olivet, waving his glistening shield to rouse
the champions of the Holy Sepulchre to the supreme effort. ‘It is St.
George the Martyr who has come again to help us,’ cried Godfrey, and
at his words the crusaders started up without a feeling of fatigue and
carried everything before them. The day, we are told, was Friday, the
hour was three in the afternoon (the moment at which the last cry from
the cross announced the accomplishment of the Saviour’s passion), when
Letold of Tournay stood, the first victorious champion of the cross,
on the walls of Jerusalem. Next to him came, we are told, his brother
Engelbert: the third was Godfrey. Tancred with the two Roberts stormed
the gate of St. Stephen; the Provencals climbed the ramparts by ladders,
and the conquest of Jerusalem was achieved. The insults offered a little
while ago to the crucifixes were avenged by Godfrey’s orders in the
massacre of hundreds; the carnage in the mosque of Omar swept away the
bodies of thousands in a deluge of human blood. The Jews were all burnt
alive in their synagogues. The horses of the crusaders, who rode up to
the porch of the temple, were (so the story goes) up to the knees in the
loathsome stream; and the forms of Christian knights hacking and hewing
the bodies of the living and the dead furnished a pleasant commentary on
the sermon of Urban at Clermont.
[Sidenote: Adoration of the crusaders in the church of the Sepulchre.]
[Sidenote: Exaltation of Peter the Hermit.]
From the duties of slaughter these disciples of the Lamb of God passed
to those of devotion. Bareheaded and barefooted, clad in a robe of
pure white linen, in an ecstasy of joy and thankfulness mingled with
profound contrition, Godfrey entered the church of the Holy Sepulchre
and knelt at the tomb of his Lord. With groans and tears his followers
came, each in his turn, to offer his praises for the divine mercy which
had vouchsafed this triumph to the armies of Christendom. With feverish
earnestness they poured forth the vows which bound them to sin no more,
and the excitement of prayer and slaughter, perhaps of both combined,
led them to see everything which might be needed to give effect to the
closing scene of this appalling tragedy. As the saints had arisen from
their graves when the Son of Man gave up the ghost on Calvary, so the
spirits of the pilgrims who had died on the terrible journey came to
take part in the great thanksgiving. Foremost among them was Adhemar
of Puy, rejoicing in the prayers for forgiveness and the resolutions
of repentance which promised a new era of peace upon earth and of good
will towards all men. With departed saints were mingled living men who
deserved all the honour which might be paid to them. The backsliding of
the hermit Peter was blotted out of the memory of those who remembered
only the fiery eloquence which had first called them to their now
triumphant pilgrimage, and the zeal which had stirred the heart of
Christendom to cut short the tyranny of the Unbeliever in the birth-land
of Christianity. The assembled throng fell down at his feet, and gave
thanks to God who had vouchsafed to them such a teacher. His task was
done, and in the annals of the time Peter is heard of no more.
[Sidenote: Second and deliberate massacre in Jerusalem.]
On this dreadful day Tancred had spared three hundred captives to whom
he had given a standard as a pledge of his protection and a guarantee
of their safety. Such misplaced mercy was a crime in the eyes of the
crusaders. The massacre of the first day may have been aggravated by the
ungovernable excitement of victory: but it was resolved that on the next
day there should be offered up a more solemn and deliberate sacrifice.
The men whom Tancred had spared were all murdered; and the wrath of
Tancred was roused not by their fate but by an act which called his
honour into question. The butchery went on with impartial completeness,
old and young, decrepit men and women, mothers with their infants, boys
and girls, young men and maidens in the bloom of their vigour, all were
mowed down, and their bodies mangled until heads and limbs were tossed
together in awful chaos. A few were hidden away by Raymond of Toulouse;
his motive, however, was not mercy, but the prospects of gain in the
slave-market. After this great act of faith and devotion the streets
of the Holy City were washed by Saracen prisoners; but whether these
(like the women servants whom Odysseus strung up like sparrows after the
slaughter of the suitors) were butchered when their work was ended we are
not told.
[Sidenote: Compassion of Omar and Godfrey.]
Four centuries and a half had passed away, when these things were done,
since Omar had entered Jerusalem as a conqueror and knelt outside the
church of Constantine, that his followers might not trespass within it on
the privileges of the Christians (p. 13). The contrast is at the least
marked between the caliph of the Prophet and the children of the Holy
Catholic Church.
[Sidenote: Election of Godfrey to the sovereignty of Jerusalem.]
[Sidenote: Battle of Ascalon.]
[Sidenote: Return of the pilgrims to Europe.]
When, the business of the slaughter being ended, the chiefs met to choose
a king for the realm which they had won with their swords, one man only
appeared to whom the crown could fitly be offered. Baldwin was lord
of Edessa; Bohemond ruled at Antioch; Hugh of Vermandois and Stephen
of Chartres had returned to Europe; Robert of Flanders cared not to
stay; the Norman Robert had no mind to forfeit the duchy which he had
mortgaged; and Raymond was discredited by his avarice, and in part also
by his traffic in the visions of Peter Barthelemy. But in the city where
his Lord had worn the thorny crown, the veteran leader who had looked on
ruthless slaughter without blanching and had borne his share in swelling
the stream of blood would wear no earthly diadem, nor take the title of
king. He would watch over his Master’s grave and the interests of his
worshippers under the humble guise of Baron and Defender of the Holy
Sepulchre; and as such, a fortnight after his election, Godfrey departed
to do battle with the hosts of the Fatimite caliph of Egypt, who now felt
that the loss of Jerusalem was too high a price for the humiliation of
his rivals. The conflict took place at Ascalon, and the Fatimite army
was miserably routed. Godfrey returned to Jerusalem, to hang the sword
and standard of the sultan before the Holy Sepulchre and to bid farewell
to the pilgrims who were now to set out on their homeward journey. He
retained, with 300 knights under Tancred, only 2,000 foot soldiers for
the defence of his kingdom; and so ended the first act in the great drama
of the crusades.