Peter the Hermit, the preacher and main cause of the first Crusade, was born about the year 1050, of a noble family of Picardy. He was at first, like all men of gentle birth of his time, a soldier, and fought in some at least of the wars that were going on around him. For some cause—no one knows why—perhaps disgusted with the world, perhaps struck with repentance for a criminal or dissolute life—he withdrew from his fellow-men, and became a hermit. But it would seem that his turbulent and unquiet spirit could not stand the monotony, though it might support the austerities, of a hermit’s life, and he resolved about the year 1093 to go as a pilgrim to Palestine. He found the pilgrims miserable indeed. As most of them had been robbed or exorbitantly charged on the road, there was not one in a hundred who, on arriving before Jerusalem, found himself able to pay the fee demanded for admittance within the gates. The hapless Christians, starving and helpless, lay outside the walls, dependent on the small supplies which their brethren within could send them. Many of them died; many more turned away without having been able to enter the city; famine, thirst, nakedness, and the sword of the infidel, constantly thinned their ranks, which were as constantly renewed. Even if they got within the walls, they were not much safer: the monasteries could do little for them, though they did what they could; in the streets they were insulted, mocked, spat upon, and sometimes beaten. And in the very churches, and during the celebration of services, they were liable, as we have seen, to the attacks of a fanatic crowd, who would sometimes break in upon them, and outrage the most sacred ceremonies.

Among all the indignant and pious crowd of worshippers none was more indignant or more devout than Peter. He paid a visit to Simeon, the aged patriarch, and wept with him over the misfortunes of the Christians. “When,” said Simeon, “the cup of our sufferings is full, God will send the Christians of the West to the help of the Holy City.” Peter pressed him to write urgent letters to the sovereign powers of Europe: he himself promised to exhort the people to arm for the recovery of Jerusalem and to testify to the statements of Simeon.

And then, to the fiery imagination of the Hermit, strange voices began to whisper, and strange forms began to be seen. “Arise, Peter,” cried our Lord Himself to him, when he was worshipping at the Holy Sepulchre, “Arise, Peter. Hasten to announce the tribulations of my people. It is time that my servants were succoured and my sacred places delivered.” Peter arose and departed to obey what he believed to be a divine command. The pope Urban, who certainly saw in this an opportunity for strengthening himself against the anti-pope, received him with ardour, real or assumed, and authorized him to preach the Crusade over the whole of Europe. He crossed the Alps, and began first to preach in France. His appearance was mean and unprepossessing, his stature low; he rode on a mule, bare-headed and bare-footed, dressed in a gown of the coarsest stuff and with a long rope for a girdle. The fame of his austerity, the purity of his life, the great purpose he had on hand, went before him. The irresistible eloquence of his words moved to their deepest depths the hearts of the people. He preached in country and in town; on the public roads and in the pulpits of churches; he reminded his hearers of the profanation of the holy places; he spoke of the pilgrims, and narrated his own sufferings; he read the letters of the venerable Simeon; and finally he told them how from the very recesses of the Holy Sepulchre the voice of Jesus Himself had called aloud to him, bidding him go forth and summon the people to the recovery of Jerusalem. And as he spoke, the souls of those that heard were moved. With tears, with repentant sobs, with loud cries of anger and sorrow, they vowed to lead better lives, and dedicated themselves for the future to the service of God; women who had sinned, men who had led women astray, robbers who lived by plunder, murderers rich with the rewards of crime, priests burdened with the heavy guilt of long years of hypocrisy—all came alike to confess their sins, to vow amendment, to promise penance by taking the Cross. Peter was reverenced as a saint: such homage as never man had before was his; they tried to get the smallest rag of his garment; they crowded to look upon him, or, if it might be, to touch him. Never in the history of the world has eloquent man had such an audience, or has oratory produced such an effect. And in the midst of this agitation, confined as yet, be it observed, to France, whose soil has ever been favourable to the birth of new ideas, came letters from the emperor Alexis Comnenus, urging on the princes of the West the duty of coming to his help. The leader of the infidels was at his very gates. Were Constantinople to fall, Christendom itself might fall. He might survive the loss of his empire: he could never survive the shame of seeing it pass under the laws of Mohammed. And if more were wanted to urge on the enthusiasm of the people, Constantinople was rich beyond all other cities of the world; her riches should be freely lavished upon her defenders; her daughters were fairer than the daughters of the West; their love should be the reward of those who fought against the Infidels.

The pope received the letters, and held a council, first at Plaisance, then at Clermont (1094). His speech at the latter council has been variously given; four or five reports of it remain, all evidently written long after the real speech had been delivered; all meant to contain what the pope ought to have said; and all, as appears to us, singularly cold and artificial. The council began by renewing the Peace of God; by placing under the protection of the Church all widows, orphans, merchants, and labourers; by proclaiming the inviolability of the sanctuary; and by decreeing that crosses erected by the wayside should be a refuge against violence. And at its tenth sitting, the council passed to what was its real business, the consideration of Peter’s exhortations and the reading of the letters of the patriarch Simeon and the emperor Alexis. Peter spoke first, narrating, as usual, the sufferings of the pilgrims. Urban followed him. And when he had finished, with one accord the voices of the assembled council shouted, “Dieu le veut! Dieu le veut!” “Yes,” answered the pontiff, “God wills it, indeed! Behold how our Lord fulfils his own words, that where two or three are gathered together in his name He will be in the midst. He it is who has inspired these words. Let them be for you your only war-cry.” AdhÉmar, Bishop of Puy, begged to be the first to take the vow of the Crusade. Other bishops followed. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, first of the laity, swore to conduct his men to Palestine, and then the knights and barons followed in rapid succession. Urban declined himself to lead the host, but appointed Bishop AdhÉmar as his deputy. Meantime he promised all Crusaders a full and complete remission of their sins. He promised their goods and their families the protection of Saint Peter and the Church; he placed under anathema all who should do violence to the soldiers of the Cross; and he threatened with excommunication all who should fail to perform their oaths. As if the madness of enthusiasm was not sufficiently kindled already, the pope himself went to Rouen, to Angers, to Tours, and to Nismes, called councils, harangued the people, and enjoined on the bishops the duty of proclaiming the Crusade; and the next year was spent in preaching, exhorting, in maintaining the enthusiasm already kindled, and in preparing for the war. The kings of Europe, for their part, had good reasons for holding aloof, and so took no part in the Crusade: the king of France, because he was under excommunication; the emperor of Germany, because he was also under excommunication; William Rufus, because he was an unbeliever and a scoffer. But for the rank and file, the First Crusade, which was instigated by a Frenchman, was mainly recruited from France.

Here, indeed, the delirium of enthusiasm grew daily in intensity. During the winter of 1095-96 nothing but the sound of preparation was heard throughout the length and breadth of the land. It was not enough that knights and men-at-arms should take upon them the vows of the Cross; it behoved every man who could carry a pike or wield a sword to join the army of deliverance. Artisans left their work, merchants their shops, labourers their tools, and the very robbers and brigands came out from their hiding-places, with the intention of atoning for their past sins by fighting in the army of the Lord. All industry, save that of the forging of weapons, ceased; for six whole months there was no crime; for six months an uninterrupted Peace of God, concluded by tacit consent, while the croisÉs crowded the churches to implore the divine protection and blessing, to consecrate their arms, and to renew their vows. In order to procure horses, armour, and arms, the price of which went up enormously, the knights sold their lands at prices far below their real value; the lands were in many cases bought up by far-seeing abbots and attached to monasteries, so that the Church, at least, might be enriched, whatever happened. No sacrifice, however, appeared too great in the enthusiasm of departure; no loss too heavy to weigh for one moment against the obligation of the sacred oath. And strange signs and wonders began to appear in the heavens. Stars were seen to fall upon the earth: these were the kings and chiefs of the Saracens; unearthly flames were visible at night: these betokened the conflagration of the Mohammedan strong places; blood-red clouds, stained with the blood of the Infidel, hovered over the east; a sword-shaped comet, denoting the sword of the Lord, was in the south; and in the sky were seen, not once, but many times, the towers of a mighty city and the legions of a mighty host.

With the first warm days of early spring the impatience of the people was no longer to be restrained. Refusing to wait while the chiefs of the Crusade organised their forces, laid down the line of their march, and matured their plans, they flocked in thousands to the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle, clamouring for immediate departure. Most of them were on foot, but those who by any means could raise the price of a horse came mounted. Some travelled in carts drawn by oxen. Their arms were such as they could afford to buy. Every one, however, brandished a weapon of some kind; it was either a spear, or an axe, or sword, or even a heavy hammer. Wives, daughters, children, old men, dragged themselves along with the exultant host, nothing doubting that they too would be permitted to share the triumph, to witness the victory. From the far corners of France, from Brittany, from the islands, from the Pyrenees, came troops of men whose language could not be understood, and who had but one sign, that of the Cross, to signify their brotherhood. Whole villages came en masse, accompanied by their priests, bringing with them their children, their cattle, their stores of provision, their household utensils, their all; while the poorest came with nothing at all, trusting that miracles, similar to those which protected the Israelites in the Desert, would protect them also—that manna would drop from heaven, and the rocks would open to supply them with water. And such was their ignorance, that as the walls of town after town became visible on their march, they pressed forward, eagerly demanding if that was Jerusalem.

Who should be the leader of the horde of peasants, robbers, and workmen who came together in the spring of 1096 on the banks of the Meuse? Among all this vast host there were found but nine knights: Gaultier Sans Avoir—Walter the Penniless—and eight others. But there was with them, better than an army of knights, the great preacher of the Crusade, the holy hermit and worker of miracles, Peter. To him was due the glory of the movement: to him should be given the honour of leading the first, and, it was believed, the successful army. By common acclamation they elected Peter their leader. He, no less credulous than his followers, accepted the charge; confident of victory, and mounted on his mule—the mule which had borne him from town to town to preach the war—clothed in his monastic garb, with sandals on his feet and a cross in his hand, he led the way.

Under his command were a hundred thousand men, bearing arms, such as they were, and an innumerable throng of women, old men, and children. He divided this enormous host into two parts, keeping the larger under his own orders, and sending on the smaller as an advance-guard, under the knight Walter.

Walter started first. Marching down the banks of the Rhine, he experienced no difficulties with the Germans. These, slow to follow the example of the fiery French, and, moreover, not yet stimulated by the preaching of a Peter, still sympathised with the object of the army, which they doubtless thought was but a larger and a fiercer band of pilgrims, like many that had gone before, and assisted those who were too poor to buy provisions, to the best of their power. Passing, therefore, safely through Germany, the disorderly host, among whom all sorts of iniquities were already rife, entered Hungary. The Hungarians, by this time christianised, had yet no kind of enthusiasm for the objects of the Crusaders or desire to aid them; but their King, Coloman, gave them guides through his vast marshes and across his rivers, and permitted them to purchase what they wanted at the public market-places; and by great fortune no accident happened to them, save the beating of a few laggards after the crossing of the river Maros. Judging it idle to avenge an insult which it cost little to endure, Walter pushed on till he reached Belgrade, the frontier town of the Bulgarians. These were even a ruder people than the Hungarian Christians; they refused to recognise the Crusaders as their brethren: subjects of the Greek crown, they refused any submission but that which was extorted by arms, and living in the midst of inaccessible forests, they preserved a wild and savage independence which made them the terror of the pilgrims, whom they maltreated, and the Greeks, who tried to reduce them to submission.

Here the first troubles began. The Governor of Belgrade refusing them permission to buy provisions, the army found themselves reduced to the greatest straits for want of food; and seeing no other way for help, they left the camp and dispersed about the country, driving in the cattle, and laying hands on everything they could find. The Bulgarians armed in haste, and slaughtered vast numbers of the marauders, burning alive a hundred and forty who had taken refuge in a chapel. Walter broke up his camp in haste, and pressing on, left those to their own fate who refused to obey his order to follow. What that fate was may easily be surmised. With diminished forces, starving and dejected, he pushed on through the forests till he found himself before Nissa, when the governor, taking pity on the destitute condition of the pilgrims, gave them food, clothes, and arms. These misfortunes fell upon them, it will be observed, in Christian lands, and long before they saw the Saracens. Thence the humbled Crusaders, seeing in these disasters a just punishment for their sins—they were at least always ready to repent—proceeded, with no other enemy than famine, through Philippopolis and Adrianople to Constantinople itself. Here the emperor, Alexis Comnenus, gave them permission to encamp outside the town, to buy and sell, and to wait for the arrival of Peter and the second army.

But if the first expedition was disastrous the second was far worse. Peter seems to have followed at first a somewhat different route to that of his advanced guard. He went through Lorraine, Franconia, Bavaria, and Austria, and entered Hungary, some months after Walter, with an army of forty thousand men. Permission was readily granted to march through the country, on the condition of the maintenance of order and the purchase of provisions; nor was it till they arrived at Semlin, the place where their comrades had been beaten, that any disturbance arose. Here they unfortunately saw suspended the arms and armour which had been stripped from the stragglers of Walter’s army. The soldiers, incensed beyond control, rushed upon the little town, and, with the loss of a hundred men, massacred every Hungarian in the place. Then they sat down to enjoy themselves for five days. The people of Belgrade, panic-stricken on hearing of the fate of Semlin, fled all with one accord, headed by their governor, and hurriedly carrying away everything portable; and Peter, before the King of Hungary had time to collect an army to avenge the taking of his city, managed to transport everything to the other side of the Danube, and pitched his camp under the deserted walls of Belgrade. There the army, laden with spoils of all kinds, waited to collect their treasures, which they carried with them on their march to Nissa. They stopped here one night, obtaining, as Walter had done, permission to buy and sell, and giving hostages for good conduct. All went well; the camp was raised, the hostages returned, and the army on its march again, when an unhappy quarrel arose between some of the stragglers, consisting of about a hundred Germans, and the townspeople. The Germans set fire to seven mills and certain buildings outside the town. Having done this mischief they rejoined their comrades; but the indignant Bulgarians, furious at this return for their hospitality, rushed after them, arms in hand. They attacked the rear-guard, killed those who resisted, and returned to the town, driving before them the women and children, and loaded with the spoil which remained from the sacking of Semlin. Peter and the main body hastened back on receiving news of the disaster, and tried once more to accommodate matters. But in the midst of his interview with the governor, and when all seemed to promise well, a fresh outbreak took place, and a second battle began, far worse than the first. The Crusaders were wholly routed and fled in all directions, while the carnage was indiscriminate and fearful. In the evening the unhappy Peter found himself on an adjoining height with five hundred men. The scattered fugitives gradually rallied, but one-fourth of his fighting men were killed on this disastrous day, and the army lost all their baggage, their treasures, and their stores; while of the women and children by far the greater number were either killed or taken captive. Starving and destitute, they straggled on through the forests, dreading the further vengeance of the Bulgarians, until they entered Thrace. Here deputies from the emperor met them, with reproaches for their disorderly conduct, and promises that, should they conduct themselves with order, his clemency would not be wanting.

Arrived at Constantinople, and having rejoined Walter, Peter lost no time in obtaining an audience from the emperor. Alexis heard him patiently, and was even moved by his eloquence; but he advised him, above all things, to wait for the arrival of the princes who were to follow. Advice was the last thing these wild hordes would listen to; and, eager to be in the country of the Infidels—to get for themselves the glory of the conquest—they crossed the Dardanelles, and pitched their camp at a place called Gemlik or Ghio.

The first effervescence of zeal in Europe had not yet, however, worked off its violence. A monk named Gotschalk, emulating the honours of Peter, had raised, by dint of preaching, an army of twenty thousand Germans, sworn to the capture of the Holy Land. Setting out as leader of this band, he followed the same road as his predecessors and met with the same disasters. It was in early autumn that they passed through Hungary. The harvest was beginning, and the Germans pillaged and murdered wherever they went. King Coloman attacked them, but with little success. He then tried deceit, and, persuading the Germans to lay down their arms and to join the Hungarians as brothers, he fell on them, and massacred every one. Of all this vast host only one or two escaped through the forests to their own country to tell the tale.

One more turbulent band followed, to meet the same fate; but this was the worst—the most undisciplined of all. Headed by a priest named Volkmar, and a Count Emicon, they straggled without order or discipline, filled with the wildest superstitions. Before their army was led sometimes a she-goat, sometimes a goose, which they imagined to be filled with the Holy Spirit; and as all sins were to be expiated by the recovery of the Holy Land, there was a growing feeling that there was no longer any need of avoiding sin. Consequently, the wildest licence was indulged in, and this, which called itself “the army of the Lord,” was a horde of the most abandoned criminals. Their greatest crime was the slaughter of the Jews along the banks of the Rhine and Moselle. “Why,” they asked, “should we, who march against the Infidels, leave behind us the enemies of our Lord?” The bishops of the sees through which they passed vainly interposed their entreaties. In Cologne and Mayence every Jew was murdered; some of the miserable people tied stones round their own necks, and leaped into the river; some killed their wives and children, and set fire to their houses, perishing in the flames; the mothers killed the infants at their breasts, and the Christians themselves fled in all directions at the approach of an army as terrible to its friends as to its foes.

But their course was of short duration. At the town of Altenburg, on the confines of Hungary, which they attempted to storm, they were seized with a sudden panic and fled in all directions, being slaughtered like sheep. Emicon got together a small band, whom he led home again; a few others were led by their chiefs southwards, and joined the princes of the Crusade in Italy. None of them, according to William of Tyre, found their way to Peter the Hermit. Once across the Dardanelles, Peter’s troops, who amounted, it is said, in spite of all their losses, to no fewer than a hundred thousand fighting men, fixed a camp on the shores of the Gulf of Nicomedia, and began to ravage the country in all directions. The division of the booty soon caused quarrels, and a number of Italians and Germans, deserting the camp, went up the country in a body, and took possession of a small fortress in the neighbourhood of NicÆa, whose garrison they massacred. Then they were in their turn besieged, and, with the exception of their leader, Renaud, or Rinaldo, who embraced the Mahometan faith, were slaughtered to a man. The news of this disaster roused the Christians, not to a sense of their danger (which they could not yet comprehend), but to a vehement desire for revenge. They made the luckless Walter lead them against NicÆa, and issued forth from their camp en masse, a disordered, shouting multitude, crying for vengeance against the Turks. But their end was at hand. The Sultan of NicÆa placed half his army in ambuscade in the forest, keeping the other half in the plain; the Christians were attacked in the front and in the rear, and, cooped up together in confusion, badly armed, offered very slight resistance. Walter himself fell, one of the first; the carnage was terrific, and of all the hundred thousand whom Peter and Walter had brought across the Dardanelles, but three thousand escaped. These fled to a fortress by the sea-shore. The bones of their comrades, whitened by the eastern sun, long stood as a monument of the disaster, pointing skeleton fingers on the road to Jerusalem—the road of death and defeat.

Only three thousand, out of all these hordes, certainly a quarter of a million in number, which flocked after Peter on his mule! We can hardly believe that all were killed. Some of the women and children at least might be spared, and without doubt their blood yet flows in the veins of many Hungarian and Bulgarian families. But this was only the first instalment of slaughter. There remained the mighty armies which were even then upon the road. As for Peter, whose courage was as easily daunted as his enthusiasm was easily roused, he fled in dismay and misery back to Constantinople, having lost all authority, even over the few men who remained with him. He inveighed against their disorders and their crimes, and he declared that these were the causes of their defeat. He might have added that his own weakness, the vanity which led him to accept the rÔle, offered him by an ignorant crowd, of general as well as preacher, was no less a cause of disaster than the disorder which it was his business to check and combat day by day. His disappointment was such as would be enough to kill a really proud and strong man; but Peter was not a strong man; in the hour of danger he bent like the reed to the storm; the violence of the tempest once past, however, like the reed, he lifted up his head again. He could preach endurance, but he could not himself endure; his faith required constant stimulants, his courage the fresh fire of continual success. Peter lifted up his head again when he saw the splendid array of Godfrey and Raymond; but his old authority with the chiefs was gone. Like a worn-out tool, he had served his purpose and was cast aside. He had no more voice in their councils—no more power over their enthusiasm. He lapsed into utter insignificance, save once, when we find him actually trying to desert the army at Antioch and endeavouring to run away; and once, later on, when he received the brief ovation from the native Christians in the hour of final triumph at Jerusalem. He returned, it may be added, in safety to France when the war was over, and spent sixteen years more in honourable obscurity, the head of a monastery. Never in the world’s history, with the exception of Mohammed alone, has one man produced an effect so great and so immediate; and seldom has one man wielded an instrument so potent as Peter, when he set forth at the head of an army which wanted only discipline to make it invincible.

But now vexilla regis prodeunt; armies of a different character are assembling in the west. Foremost among them is that headed by Godfrey de Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine. Of him, and of his brother Baldwin, who accompanied him, we shall have to speak again. A word on the other chiefs of the First Crusade.

With the army of Godfrey were joined the troops of Robert Duke of Normandy and Count Robert of Flanders.

Robert, who had pledged his duchy for five years to his brother for ten thousands marks, we all know. He was strong, brave, and generous. But he had no other good quality. Had his prudence, his wisdom in council, been equal to his courage, or had his character for temperance and self-restraint been better, he would probably have obtained the crown of Jerusalem before Godfrey. As it was, he went out for the purpose of fighting; he fought well; and came home again, no richer than when he went. He was joined in Syria by the Saxon prince, Edgar Atheling, the lawful heir to the English crown; but the chroniclers are silent as to the prowess of the English contingent.

The other leaders who followed separately were Hugh Vermandois, Hugh le Grand, the brother to the king of France, and Stephen, Count of Blois, a scholar and a poet. He it was who married Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, and was the father of our King Stephen. Both of these chiefs left the Crusade at Antioch and went home disgusted at their sufferings and ill-success; but, after the taking of the city, popular opinion forced them to go out again.

Count Raymond, of Toulouse, who led his own army by an independent route, is perhaps the most difficult character to understand. He was not pious; he was cold and calculating; he was old and rich; he had already gained distinction by fighting against the Moors; he loved money. Why did he go? It is impossible to say, except that he had vague ambitions of kingdoms in the East more splendid than any in the West. He alienated a great part of his territory to get treasure for the war, and he was by far the richest of the princes. The men he led, the ProvenÇaux, were much less ignorant, less superstitious, and less smitten with the divine fury of the rest. Provence, which in two more centuries was to be itself the scene of a crusade as bloody as any in Palestine, was already touched with the heresy which was destined to break out in full violence before very many years. The ProvenÇaux loved music, dancing, good cheer; but they were indifferent to the Church. They could plunder better than they could pray, and they were more often gathered round the provisions than the pulpits. It is singular, therefore, that the most signal miracle which attended the progress of the Christian arms should have been wrought among the ProvenÇaux. It was so, however: Peter Bartholomeus, who found the Holy Lance, was a priest of Provence. AdhÉmar, Bishop of Puy, himself a ProvenÇal, the most clear-headed, most prudent, and most thoughtful of the army, treated the story of Peter, it is true, with disdain; nor did Raymond believe it; as was evident when, on there appearing, shortly afterwards, symptoms that another miracle, of which he saw no use, was about to happen, he suppressed it with a strong hand. At the same time, he did not disdain to make use of the Holy Lance, and the “miracle” most certainly contributed very largely, as we shall see, to the success of the Christians.

The two remaining great chiefs were Bohemond and Tancred. Bohemond, who was a whole cubit taller than the tallest man in the army, was the son of that Norman, Robert Guiscard, who, with a band of some thirty knights, managed to wrest the whole of Calabria, Apulia, and Sicily from the Greeks. On his father’s death he had quarrelled with his brother Roger over the inheritance, and was actually besieging him in the town of Amalfi, when the news of the Crusades reached him. The number of those engaged, the rank of the leaders, the large share taken by the Normans, inspired him with the hope that here, at last, was the chance of humiliating, and even conquering, his enemy the Emperor of Constantinople. Perhaps, too, some noble impulse actuated him. However that may be, he began himself to preach a crusade to his own army, and with so much success—for he preached of glory and plunder, as well as of religion—that he found himself in a few days at the head of ten thousand horse and twenty thousand foot. With these he joined the other chiefs at Constantinople. His life was a long series of battles. He was crafty and sagacious; hence his name of Guiscard—the wise one; quite indifferent to the main object of the Crusaders—in fact, he did not go on with them to Jerusalem itself—and anxious only to do the Greeks a mischief and himself some good.

With him went his cousin Tancred, the hero of the “Jerusalem Delivered.” The history of the First Crusade contains all his history. After the conquest of Jerusalem, and after displaying extraordinary activity and bravery, he was made Prince of Galilee, and his cousin was Prince of Antioch. Tancred is a hero of romance. Apart from his fighting he has no character; in every battle he is foremost, but when the battle is over we hear nothing about him. He appears however to have had a great deal of his cousin’s prudence, and united with the bravery of the lion some, at least, of the cunning of the fox. He died about the year 1113.

Hugh, Count of Vermandois, who was one of the chiefs of the army brought by Robert of Normandy, was the third son of Henry I. of France. He was called Le Grand, not on account of any mental or physical superiority, but because by marriage he was the head of the Vermandois house. He was one of the first to desert the Crusade, terrified by the misfortunes which overtook the expedition; but, like Stephen of Blois, he was obliged by the force of popular opinion to go back again as a Crusader. The second time he was wounded by the Turks near NicÆa, and only got as far as Tarsus in Cilicia, where he died. Like Robert of Normandy, he joined to great bravery and an extreme generosity a certain weakness of character, which marred all his finer qualities.

Robert of Flanders seems to have been a fighting man pure and simple—by the Saracens called “St. George,” and by his own side the “Sword and Lance of the Christians.” He, no more fighting remaining to be done, returned quietly to his own states, with the comfortable conviction that he had atoned for his former sins by his conduct in the Holy War. He enjoyed ten years more fighting at home, and then got drowned in the River Marne; an honest single-minded knight, who found himself in perfect accord with the spirit of his age.

With these principal barons and chiefs were a crowd of poorer princes, each with his train of knights and men-at-arms. The money for the necessary equipments had been raised in various ways: some had sold their lands, others their seigneurial rights; some had pawned their states; while one or two, despising these direct and obvious means of raising funds, had found a royal road to money by pillaging the villages and towns around them.

It was not till eight months after the Council of Clermont^[49] that Godfrey’s army, consisting of ten thousand knights and eighty thousand foot, was able to begin its march. Fortunately, a good harvest had just been gathered in, and food of all kinds was abundant and cheap. The army, moreover, was well-disciplined, and no excesses were committed on its way through Germany. It followed pretty nearly the same line as that taken by Walter and Peter, and must have been troubled along the whole route by news of the extravagances and disasters of those who had preceded them. Arriving on the frontiers of Hungary, Godfrey sent deputies to King Coloman, asking permission to march peaceably, buying whatever he had need of, through his dominions. Hostages, consisting of his brother Baldwin and his family, were given for the good behaviour of the troops, and permission was granted; the King of Hungary following close on the track of the army, in case any breach of faith should be attempted. But none took place, and at Semlin, when the last Crusader had crossed the river into Bulgarian territory, King Coloman personally, and with many expressions of friendship and goodwill, delivered over the hostages, and parted. Getting through the land of the Bulgarians as quickly as might be, Godfrey pushed on as far as Philippopolis. There he learned that Count Hugh, who had been shipwrecked, sailing in advance of his army, on the shores of Epirus, was held a prisoner by Alexis Comnenus, very probably as a sort of hostage for the good behaviour of the very host whose help he had implored. Godfrey sent imperatively to demand the release of the Count, and being put off with an evasive reply, gave his troops liberty to ravage and plunder along the road—a privilege which they fully appreciated. This practical kind of reply convinced Alexis that the barbarians were not, at least, awed by the greatness of his fame. He hastened to give way, and assured Godfrey that his prisoner should be released directly the army arrived at Constantinople.

Meantime, the other armies were all on their way, converging to Constantinople. The route followed by them is not at all times clear. Some appear to have marched through Italy, Dalmatia, and across Thessaly, while a few went by sea; and though the first armies of Peter and Walter carried off a vast number of pilgrims, there can be no doubt that these armies were followed by a great number of priests, monks, women, and persons unable to fight.

Alexis, on hearing of Bohemond’s speedy arrival, was greatly alarmed—as, indeed, he had reason to be. With his usual duplicity, he sent ambassadors to flatter his formidable visitor, while he ordered his frontier troops to harass him on his march; and Bohemond had alternately to receive the assurances of the Emperor’s friendship, and to fight his troops. No wonder that he wrote to Godfrey at Constantinople to be on his guard, as he had to do “with the most ferocious wild beast and the most wicked man alive.” But, in spite of his hatred, the fierce Norman found himself constrained to put off his resentment in the presence of Greek politeness; and the rich gifts with which Alexis loaded him, if they did not quiet his suspicions, at least allayed his wrath. Alexis got rid of his unwelcome visitors as speedily as he could. After going through the ceremony of adopting Godfrey as his son, and putting the empire under his protection, he received the homage of the princes, one after the other, with the exception alone of Tancred. And then he sent them all across the straits, to meet whatever fortune awaited them on the other side.

The story of the First Crusade is an oft-told tale. But it is a tale which bears telling often. There is nothing in history which may be compared with this extraordinary rising of whole peoples. The numbers which came from Western Europe cannot, of course, be even approximately stated. Probably, counting the women, children, and camp-followers, their number would not be less than a million. Of these, far more than a half, probably two-thirds, came from the provinces of France. The Germans were but slightly affected by the universal enthusiasm—the English not at all. Edgar Atheling brought a band of his countrymen to join Robert of Normandy; but these were probably those who had compromised themselves in former attempts to raise Northumbria and other parts of England. The Italians came from the south, but not from the north; and nearly the whole of Spain was occupied by the caliphatecaliphate of Cordova. That all these soldiers were fired with the same ardour, were led by the same disinterested hope, is not to be supposed; but it is certain from every account, whether Christian or Arabic, that the main object of their enterprise was a motive power strong enough, of itself, to enable them to endure hardships and privations almost incredible, and to combat with forces numerically, at least, ten times their superior.

The way to the Holy Land lay through a hostile country. Asia Minor, overrun by the Mohammedans since twenty years, was garrisoned rather than settled. Numerous as were the followers of the Crescent, they had not been able to do more, in their rapid march of conquest, than to take strongholds and towns, and keep them. There were even some towns which had never surrendered, while of those which belonged to them, many were held by insufficient forces, and contained an element of weakness in the large number of Christian inhabitants. And the first of these towns which came in their way was the town of NicÆa.

The miserable remnant of Peter’s army, on the arrival of their friends, made haste to show them the places of their own disasters. These fugitives had lived hidden in the forest, and now, on seeing the brassard of the Cross, emerged—barefooted, ragged, unarmed, cowed—to tell the story of their sufferings. They took the soldiers to see the plain where their great army had been massacred—there were the piles of bones, the plain white with them; they took them to the camp where the women and children had been left. These were gone, but the remains were left of the old men and those who had tried to defend them. Their bodies lay in the moat which had been cut round the camp. In the centre, like a pillar of reproach, stood the white stones which had served for the altar of the camp.

Filled with wrath at the sight of these melancholy objects, the soldiers cried out to be led against their enemy; and the whole army, preceded by four thousand pioneers to clear the way, was marched in good order towards NicÆa, where the enemy awaited them. The Crusaders—they spoke nineteen different languages—were accoutred with some attempt at similarity. The barons and knights wore a coat of chain-armour, while a helmet, set with silver for the princes, of steel for knights, and of iron for the rest, protected their heads. Round bucklers were carried by the knights, long shields by the foot-soldiers; besides the lance, the sword, the arrow, they carried the mace and battleaxe, the sling, and the terrible crossbow; while, for a rallying-point for the soldiers, every prince bore painted on his standard those birds, animals, and towns, which subsequently became coats-of-arms, and gave birth to the science of Heraldry.

The total number of the gigantic host amounted, it is said, to one hundred thousand knights and five hundred thousand foot-soldiers. But this is evidently an exaggeration. If it is not, the losses by battle, famine, and disease were proportionately greater than those of any wars recorded in history.

The first operation was the siege of NicÆa—NicÆa, the city of the great Council—and the avenging of the slaughtered army of Peter. NicÆa stood on the low shores of a lake. It was provided with vessels of all kinds, by which it could receive men and provisions, and was therefore practically impregnable. But the Mohammedans, fully advertised of the approach of their enemies, had made preparations to receive them; and with an immense army, all mounted, charged the array of the Christians on the moment of their arrival in the plains, and while they were occupied in putting up their tents. Victory, such as it was, remained with the Crusaders, but cost them the lives of more than two thousand of their men. The siege of NicÆa, undertaken after this battle, made slow progress. While the Christians wasted their strength in vain efforts to demolish the walls and cross the moats, the garrison, constantly reinforced during the night by means of the lake, held out unshaken for some weeks. Finding out the means by which their strength was recruited, Godfrey, by immense exertions, transported overland from the neighbouring sea a number of light craft, which he launched on the lake, and succeeded in accomplishing a perfect blockade of the town. The NicÆans, terrified at the success of this manoeuvre, and by the fate of their most important town, were ready to surrender at discretion, when the cunning of Alexis Comnenus—who had despatched a small force, nominally for the assistance of the Crusaders, but really for the purpose of watching after his own interests—succeeded in inducing the town to surrender to him alone; and the Christians, after all their labour, had the mortification of seeing the Greek flag flying over the citadel, instead of their own. From his own point of view, the Emperor was evidently right. The Crusaders had sworn to protect his empire; he claimed sovereignty over all these lands; his object was neither to revenge the death of a horde of invaders, nor to devastate the towns, nor to destroy the country—but to recover and preserve. NicÆa, at least, was almost within his reach; and though he could not expect that his authority would be recognised in the south of Asia Minor, or in Syria, he had reason to hope that here at any rate, so near to Constantinople, and so recently after the oaths of the princes, it would be recognised.

So, certainly, thought the princes; for, in spite of the unrepressed indignation of the army, they refrained from pillaging the town and murdering the infidels, and gave the word to march.

It was now early summer; the soldiers had not yet experienced the power of an Asiatic sun; no provision was made against the dangers of famine and thirst, and their way led through a land parched with heat, devastated by wars, over rocky passes, across pathless plains. The Crusaders neither knew the country, nor made any preparations, beyond carrying provisions for two or three days. They were, moreover, encumbered with their camp-followers, their baggage, and the weight of their arms.

They were divided, principally for convenience of forage, into two corps d’armÉe, of which one was commanded by Godfrey, Raymond, Robert of Flanders, and the Count of Vermandois, while the other was led by the three Norman chiefs, Robert, Tancred, and Bohemond. For seven days all went well, the armies having completely lost sight of each other, but confident, after their recent successes, that there would be no more enemies at hand to combat. They were mistaken. Tancred’s division, on the evening of the 30th of June, pitched their camp in a valley called by William of Tyre the valley of Gorgona. It was protected on one side by a river, on the other by a marsh filled with reeds. The night was passed in perfect security, but at daybreak the enemy was upon them. Bohemond took the command. Placing the women and the sick in the midst, he divided the cavalry into three brigades, and prepared to dispute the passage of the river. The Saracens discharged their arrows into the thick ranks of the Crusaders, whose wounded horses confused and disordered them. Unable to endure these attacks with patience, the Christians crossed the river and charged their enemies; but the Saracens, mounted on lighter horses, made way for them to pass, and renewed the discharge of their arrows. Another band, taking advantage of the knights having crossed the river, forded it at a higher point, and attacked the camp itself. Then the slaughter of the sick and wounded, and even of the women, save those whose beauty was sufficient to ransom their lives, began. On the other side of the stream the knights fought every one for himself. Tancred, nearly killed in the mÊlÉe, was saved by Bohemond; Robert of Normandy performed prodigies; the camp was retaken, and the women rescued. But the day was not won. Nor would it have been won, but for the arrival of Godfrey, to whom Bohemond, early in the day, had sent a messenger. He brought up the whole of his army, and the Saracens, retreating to the hills, found themselves attacked on all sides. They fled in utter disorder, leaving twenty-three thousand dead on the field, and the whole of their camp and baggage in the hands of the Christians. These had lost four thousand, besides the number of followers killed in the camp. The booty was immense, and the soldiers pleased themselves by dressing in the long silk robes of the Mussulmans, while they refurnished themselves with arms from those they found upon the dead. Conscious, however, of the danger they had escaped, they were careful to acknowledge that they would not have carried the day, had it not been for St. George and St. Demetrius, who had been plainly visible to many fighting on their side; and the respect which they conceived for the Saracens’ prowess taught them, at least, a salutary lesson of caution.

While they were rejoicing, the enemy was acting. The defeated Turks, retreating southwards, by the way which the Christians must follow, devastated and destroyed every thing as they traversed the country, procuring one auxiliary at least in the shape of famine. They had two more—thirst and heat.

The Crusaders, once more on the march, resolved not to separate again, and formed henceforth but one army. But they journeyed through a desert and desolate country; there was no food but the roots of plants; their horses died for want of water and forage; the knights had to walk on foot, or to ride oxen and asses; every beast was converted into a beast of burden, until the time came when the beasts themselves perished by the way, and all the baggage was abandoned. Their path led through Phrygia, a wild and sterile country, with no fountains or rivers; the road was strewn as they went along by the bodies of those who died of sunstroke or of thirst; women, overcome by fatigue and want of water, lay down and were delivered of children, and there died, mothers and infants; in one terrible day five hundred died on the march; the falcons and hawks, which the knights had been unable to leave behind, fell dead from their perches; the hounds deserted their masters, and went away to seek for water; the horses themselves, in which the hope of the soldier was placed, lay down and died. At last they came to a river; even this timely relief was fatal, for three hundred killed themselves by drinking too much. They rested, after this disastrous march, at Antiocheia, the former capital of Pisidia. Here Raymond fell ill, but happily recovered, and Godfrey was dangerously wounded in a conflict with a bear. To account for the discomfiture of the prince, it is recorded that the bear was the biggest and most ferocious bear ever seen.

During their stay at Antiocheia, Tancred and Baldwin—the former with a detachment of Italians, the latter with one of Flemings—were sent to explore the country, to bring help to the Christians, and report on the means of obtaining provisions. They went first to Iconium; finding no enemies, they went southwards, and Tancred, leading the way, made an easy conquest of Tarsus, promising to spare the lives of the garrison. Baldwin arrived the next day, and on perceiving the flag of Tancred on the towers, insisted, on the ground that his own force was superior in numbers, on taking it down and replacing it by his own. A violent quarrel arose, the first of the many which were to disgrace the history of the Crusades. Neither would give way. They agreed at last to refer the dispute to the inhabitants. These, at first, gave the preference to Tancred; but at last, yielding to the threats of Baldwin, transferred their allegiance to him, and threw Tancred’s flag over the ramparts. Tancred withdrew, indignant, and marched with all his men to Adana, an important place some twenty miles from Tarsus. This he found in the possession of a Burgundian adventurer, who had got a company of pilgrims to follow him, and seized the place. History does not deign, unfortunately, to notice the exploits of the viri obscuri, but it is clear enough, that while the great princes were seizing states and cities, bands of armed soldiers, separated from the great army, were overrunning the country, taking possession of small forts and towns, where they lived at their own will and pleasure, till the Turks came and killed them all. The Burgundian was courteous to Tancred, and helped him with provisions on his way to Malmistra, a large and important place, before which he pitched his camp.

But a terrible calamity had happened at Tarsus. Baldwin got into the town, and, jealous of his newly-acquired possession, ordered the gates to be carefully closed and guarded. In the evening, a troop of three hundred Crusaders, sent by Bohemond to reinforce Tancred, arrived at the town, and asked for admission. Baldwin refused. They pleaded the extremity of fatigue and hunger, to which a long march had reduced them. Baldwin still refused. His own men urged him to admit them. Baldwin refused again. In the morning they were all found dead, killed in the night by the Turks, who took advantage of their sleep and exhaustion. At this spectacle the grief and rage of the soldiers were turned against the cause of their comrades’ death. Baldwin took refuge in a tower, but presently came out, and, lamenting the disaster of which he alone was the cause, pointed his soldiers to the towers where the garrison of the Turks (prisoners, but under promise of safety) were shut up. The Christians massacred every one.

Here they were joined by a fleet of pirates, who, after having been for ten years the terror of the Mediterranean, were desirous of expiating their crimes by taking part in the Crusade. Their leader, Guymer, was a Boulogne man, and readily brought his men as a reinforcement to the troops of Baldwin, his seigneur. Baldwin left a garrison in Tarsus, and set out to rejoin Tancred. But the death of the three hundred could not so easily be forgotten. Tancred and his army, maddened at the intelligence of Baldwin’s approach, clamoured for revenge, and Tancred, without much reluctance, gave the order to attack Baldwin’s camp. A sanguinary battle followed, in which Tancred’s forces, inferior in numbers, were worsted, and obliged to withdraw. The night brought reflection, and the next morning was occupied in reconciliation and promises of friendship. Malmistra was taken, and all the Mohammedans slaughtered, and after a few more exploits, Tancred returned to the army. Baldwin, however, whose ardour for the recovery of Jerusalem had yielded by this time to his ambition, only saw, in the disordered state of the country, the splendid opportunities which it presented to one who had the courage to seize them. Perhaps the sight of the successful Burgundian of Adana helped him to form projects of his own; perhaps the remarks of an Armenian named Pancrates, who was always whispering in his ear of the triumphs to be won by an independent line of action. He returned to Godfrey, indeed, but only to try his powers of seduction among the soldiers, whom he incited to follow him by magnificent promises. The princes were alarmed at the first news of his intended defection; at a council hastily assembled, it was resolved to prohibit any Crusader, whatever his rank, from leaving the army. Baldwin, however, the very night on which this resolution was carried, secretly marched out of the camp, at the head of some twelve hundred foot-soldiers and two hundred knights, accompanied by his Armenian friend. His exploits, until he was summoned back to Jerusalem, hardly concern us here. After taking one or two small towns, and quarrelling with Pancrates, whom he left behind, he pushed on to Edessa, which, by a series of lucky escapes, he entered with only a hundred knights, to become its king. Here he must for the present be left.

Meantime, the great army of the Crusaders was pressing on. For the moment it was unmolested. Both Christian and Saracen had begun to conceive a respect for each other’s prowess. The latter found that his innumerable troops of light cavalry were of little use against the heavily-armed and disciplined masses of the Crusaders: while these, harassed by the perpetual renewal of armies which seemed only destroyed to spring again from the earth, and convinced now that the recovery of the Holy City would be no holiday ramble in a sunny land, marched with better discipline and more circumspection. But the Saracens, unable to raise another army in time, fled before them, leaving towns and villages unoccupied. The Christians burnt the mosques, and plundered the country. Even the passes of Mount Taurus were left unguarded, and the Christian army passed through defiles and valleys, where a very small force might have barred the passage for the whole army. They suffered, however, from their constant enemies, heat and thirst. On one mountain, called the “Mountain of the Devil,” the army had to pass along a path so narrow that the horses were led, and the men could not walk two abreast. Here, wearied with the ascent, faint with thirst, hundreds sank, unable to proceed, or fell over the precipices. It was the last of the cruel trials through which they were to pass before they reached the land of their pilgrimage. From the summit of the last pass, they beheld, stretched out at their feet, the fair land of Syria. Covered with ruins, as it was—those ruins which exist to the present day—and devastated by so many successive wars, nothing had been able to ruin the fertility of the soil; and after the arid plains through which they had passed, no wonder the worn and weary soldiers rejoiced and thanked God aloud, when they saw at last the very country to which they were journeying. The ordeal of thirst and heat had been passed through, and their numbers were yet strong. Nothing now remained, as they fondly thought, but to press on, and fight the enemy before the very walls of Jerusalem.

The successes of Tancred cleared the way for the advance of the main army. Nothing interposed to stop them; provisions were plentiful, and their march was unimpeded by any enemy. Count Robert of Flanders led the advance corps. At Artasia, a town about a day’s march from Antioch, the gates were thrown open to them; and though the garrison of Antioch threw out flying squadrons of cavalry, they were not able to check the advance of the army, which swarmed along the roads, in numbers reduced, indeed, by one half, from the six hundred thousand who gathered before NicÆa, but still irresistible. The old bridge of stone which crossed the Orontes was stormed, and the Crusaders were fairly in Syria, and before Antioch.

The present governor of this great and important town was Baghi Seyan, one of the Seljukian princes. He had with him a force of about twenty-five thousand, foot and horse; he was defended by a double wall of stone, strengthened by towers; he was plentifully supplied with provisions; he had sent messengers for assistance to all quarters, and might reasonably hope to be relieved; and he had expelled from the town all useless mouths, including the native Christians. Moreover, it was next to impossible for the Crusaders to establish a complete line round the city, and cut him off from supplies and reinforcements.

It was late in the autumn when the Christian army sat down before the first place. For the first two or three weeks the country was scoured for provisions, and the soldiers, improvident and reckless, lived in a luxury and abundance which they had never before experienced. But even Syria, fertile and rich, could not long suffice for the daily wants of a wasteful army of three hundred thousand men. Food began to grow scarce; foraging parties brought in little or nothing, though they scoured the whole country; bands of Turks, mounted on fleet and hardy horses, intercepted straggling parties, and robbed them of their cattle; the fleet brought them very small supplies; Baldwin had as yet sent nothing from Edessa, and famine once more made its appearance in the camp. The rains of winter fell, and their tents were destroyed. The poor lived on what they could find, bark and roots; the rich had to spend all their money in buying food; and all the horses died. Worse still, there was defection among the very leaders; Robert of Normandy went to Laodicea, and was persuaded with great difficulty to come back. Peter the Hermit fairly ran away, and was brought back a prisoner to the army which his own voice had raised. And when Bohemond and Tancred went out, with as large a force as could be spared, to procure provisions, they were attacked by superior numbers, and obliged to return empty-handed. Bishop AdhÉmar, seeing in the sins of the camp a just cause for the punishments that were falling upon it, enjoined a three days’ fast, and public prayers. The former was superfluous, inasmuch as the whole camp was fasting. But he did more. He caused all women to be sent away, and all games of chance to be entirely prohibited. The distress continued, but hope and confidence were revived; and when, early in the year 1098, supplies were brought in, the army regained most of its old bravoure. A victory gained over a reinforcement of twenty-five thousand Turks aided in reviving the spirit of the soldiers: it was in this action that Godfrey is reported to have cut a Turk completely through the body, so that his horse galloped off with the legs and lower part of the trunk still in the saddle. The camp of the enemy was taken, and for a time there was once more abundance. But the siege was not yet over. For eight months it lingered on, defended with the obstinacy that the Turks always displayed when brought to bay within stone walls. It was not till June that the town, not the citadel, was taken, by the treachery of one Pyrrhus, an Armenian renegade. He offered secretly to put the town, which was in his charge, into the hands of Bohemond. The Norman chief, always anxious to promote his own interests, proposed, at the council of the Crusaders, to take the town on condition that it should be given to him. Raymond of Toulouse alone objected—his objection was overruled; and on the night of the 2nd of June, Pyrrhus admitted the Christians. They made themselves masters, under cover of the darkness, of ten of the towers round the walls; and opening the gates to their own men, made an easy conquest of the town in the morning, slaughtering every Mussulman they could find. Baghi Seyan fled, and, being abandoned by his guards, was murdered by some Syrian woodcutters, who brought his head to the camp. And then, once more, untaught by their previous sufferings, the Crusaders for a few days gave themselves up to the enjoyment of their booty. But the citadel was not taken, and the host of Kerboga was within a short march of the town. He came with the largest army that the Christians had yet encountered. Robert of Flanders defended the bridge for a whole day with five hundred men, but was obliged to retire, and the Christians were in their turn the besieged.

And then, again, famine set in. The seashore was guarded by the Turks, and supplies could not be procured from the fleet; the horses, and all the beasts of burden, were slaughtered and eaten; some of the knights who were fainthearted managed to let themselves down by ropes from the walls, and made their way to Stephen of Blois, who had long since separated from the main army, and was now lying at Alexandretta. They brought such accounts of the misery of the army, that Stephen abandoned the cause as hopeless, and set sail with his men for Cilicia. Here he found Alexis himself, with a large army, consisting chiefly of those who had arrived too late to join the army of Godfrey. The newcomers heard with dismay the accounts given by Stephen; they gave themselves up to lamentation and despair; they blasphemed the God who had permitted His soldiers to be destroyed, and for some days would actually permit no prayers to be offered up in their camp. Alexis broke up his camp, and returned to Constantinople. And when the news arrived in Antioch, the Crusaders, too wretched to fight or to hope, shut themselves up in the houses, and refused to come out. Bohemond set fire to the town, and so compelled them to show themselves, but could not make them fight.

Where human eloquence failed, one of those miracles, common enough in the ages of credulity, the result of overheated imaginations and excited brains, succeeded. A vision of the night came to one Peter BartholomÆus, a monk, of two men in shining raiment. One of them, St. Andrew himself, took the monk into the air, and brought him to the Church of St. Peter, and set him at the south side of the altar. He then showed him the head of a lance. “This,” he said, “was the lance which opened the side of Our Lord. See where I bury it. Get twelve men to dig in the spot till they find it.” But in the morning Peter was afraid to tell his vision. This was before the taking of Antioch. But after the town was taken, the vision came again, and in his dream Peter saw once more the apostle, and received his reproaches for neglect of his commands. Peter remonstrated that he was poor and of no account; and then he saw that the apostle’s companion was none other than the Blessed Lord himself, and the humble monk was privileged to fall and kiss His feet.

We are not of those who believe that men are found so base as to contrive a story of this kind. There is little doubt in our minds that this poor Peter, starving as he was, full of fervour and enthusiasm, dreamed his dream, not once but twice, and went at last, brimful of pious gratitude, to AdhÉmar with his tale. AdhÉmar heard him with incredulity and coldness. But Raymond saw in this incident a means which might be turned to good account. He sent twelve men to the church, and from morning till night they dug in vain. But at length Peter himself, leaping into the hole they had made, called aloud on God to redeem his promise, and produced a rusty spear-head. AdhÉmar acquiesced with the best grace in his power; the lance was exhibited to the people the next morning, and the enthusiasm of the army, famished, and ragged, and dismounted, once more beat as high as when they sewed the red Cross badge upon their shoulders, and shouted “Dieu le veut.”

They had been besieged three weeks; all their horses, except three hundred, were killed. Their ranks were grievously thinned, but they went out to meet the enemy with such confidence that the only orders given related to the distribution of the plunder. As they took their places in the plain, AdhÉmar raised their spirits by the announcement of another miracle. Saint George, Saint Maurice, and Saint Demetrius, had themselves been distinctly seen to join the army, and were in their midst. The Christians fought as only religious enthusiasts can fight—as the Mohammedans fought when the Caliph Omar led his conquering bands northwards, with the delights of heaven for those who fell, and the joys of earth for those who survived. The Turks were routed with enormous slaughter. Their camp, rich and luxurious, fell into the hands of the conquerors;^[50] plenty took the place of starvation; the common soldiers amused themselves with decking their persons with the silken robes they found in the huts; the cattle were driven to the town in long processions; and once more, forgetful of all but the present, the Christians revelled and feasted.

50. Among the spoils taken by the Christians one of the chroniclers reports a mass of manuscripts, “on which were traced the sacrilegious rites of the Mahometans in execrable characters,” doubtless Arabic. Probably among these manuscripts were many of the greatest importance. Nothing is said about their fate, but of course they were all destroyed.