For seven days after the conquest of the city and the massacre of the inhabitants the Crusaders, very naturally, abandoned themselves to rest, feasting, and services of thanksgiving. On the eighth day a council was held to determine the future mode of holding and governing their newly-acquired possessions. At the outset a remonstrance was presented by the priests, jealous as usual of their supremacy, against secular matters being permitted to take the lead of things ecclesiastical, and demanding that, before aught else was done, a Patriarch should be first elected. But the Christians were a long way from Rome. The conduct of their priests on the journey had not been such as to inspire the laity with respect for their valour, prudence, or morality, and the chiefs dismissed the remonstrance with contempt.

Robert of Flanders, in this important council, was the first to speak. He called upon his peers, setting aside all jealousies and ambitions, to elect from their own body one who might be found to unite the best valour of a knight with the best virtue of a Christian. And in a noble speech which has been preserved—if, indeed, it was not written long after the time—he disclaimed, for his own part, any desire to canvass their votes, or to become the king of Jerusalem. “I entreat you to receive my counsel as I give it you, with affection, frankness, and loyalty; and to elect for king him who, by his own worth, will best be able to preserve and extend this kingdom, to which are attached the honour of your arms, and the cause of Jesus Christ.”

Many had begun to think of offering the crown to Robert himself. But this was not his wish; and among the rest their choice clearly lay between Godfrey, Robert of Normandy, Raymond of Toulouse, and Tancred. Of these, Tancred and Robert were men ambitious of glory rather than of honours. The latter had thrown away the crown of England once, and was going to throw it away again. With equal readiness he threw away the crown of Jerusalem. Raymond, who had sworn never to return to Europe, was old and unpopular, probably from the absence of the princely munificence and affability that distinguished Godfrey, perhaps also from lack of those personal charms which his rival possessed. To be handsome as well as brave was given to Godfrey, but if it had ever been given to Raymond, his day of comeliness was past. A sort of committee of ten was appointed, whose business it was to examine closely into the private character of the chiefs, as well as into their prowess. History is prudently silent as to the reports made on the characters of the rest, but we know what was said about Godfrey. Though the ProvenÇal party invented calumnies against him, his own servants were explicit and clear in their evidence. Nothing whatever could be set down against him. Pure and unsullied in his private life, he came out of this ordeal with no other accusation against him, by those who were with him at all hours of the day and night, but one, and that the most singular complaint ever brought against a prince by his servants. They stated that in all the private acts of the duke, the one which they found most vexatious (absonum) was that when he went into a church he could not be got out of it, even after the celebration of service; but he was used to stay behind and inquire of the priests and those who seemed to have any knowledge of the matter, about the meaning and history of each picture and image: his companions, being otherwise minded, were affected with continual tedium and even disgust at this conduct, which was certainly thoughtless, because the meals, cooked, of course, in readiness for a certain hour, were often, owing to this exasperating delay, served up cold and tasteless. There is a touch of humour in the grave way in which this charge is brought forward by the historian, who evidently enjoys the picture of Godfrey’s followers standing by and waiting, while their faces grow longer as they think of the roast, which is certain to be either cold or overdone.

No one was astonished, and most men rejoiced, when the electors declared that their choice had fallen upon Godfrey. They conducted him in solemn procession to the Church of the Sepulchre with hymns and psalms. Here he took an oath to respect the laws of justice, but when the coronation should have taken place, Godfrey put away the crown. He would not wear a crown of gold when his Lord had worn a crown of thorns. Nor would he take the title of king. Of this, he said he was not worthy. Let them call him the Baron of the Holy Sepulchre. He never wore the crown, but the voice of posterity has always given him the name of king.

Godfrey of Lorraine, born at Boulogne in the year 1058, or thereabouts, was the son of Count Eustace, and the nephew of the Duke of Lorraine. His brother Baldwin, who came with him as far as Asia Minor, but separated then from the Crusaders and gained the principality of Edessa, was the second son. Eustace, who afterwards became Count of Boulogne, was the third. And his sister, Matilda, was the wife of our king Stephen.

The story of Godfrey, who is the real hero of the First Crusade, is made up of facts, visions, and legends. Let us tell them altogether.

At an early age he was once playing with his two brothers, when his father entered the room. At that moment the children were all hiding in the folds of their mother’s dress. Count Eustace, seeing the dress shaken, asked who was behind it, “There,” replied the Lady Ida, in the spirit of prophecy, “are three great princes. The first shall be a duke, the second a king, and the third a count,” a prediction which was afterwards exactly fulfilled. Unfortunately, no record exists of this prophecy till nearly a hundred years after it was made. Godfrey was adopted by his uncle, the Duke of Lorraine, and, at the age of sixteen, joined the fortunes of the emperor Henry IV. He fought in all the campaigns of that unquiet sovereign; he it was who, at the battle of Malsen, carried the Imperial banner, and signalized himself by killing Rudolph of Swabia with his own hand. He was present when, after three years’ siege, Henry succeeded in wresting Rome from Hildebrand in 1083, and in reward for his bravery on that occasion, he received the duchy of Lorraine when it was forfeited by the defection of Conrad. An illness, some time after, caused him to vow a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and until the Crusade started Godfrey had no rest or peace.

During this period of expectation, a vision, related by Albert of Aix, came to one of his servants. He saw, like Jacob, a ladder which was all pure gold, ascending from earth to heaven. Godfrey, followed by his servant Rothard, was mounting this ladder. Rothard had a lamp in his hand; in the middle of the ascent the lamp went out suddenly. Dismayed at this accident, Rothard came down the ladder, and declined to relight his lamp or to climb up again. Godfrey, however, undaunted, went on. Then the seer of the vision himself took the lamp and followed his master; both arrived safely at the top, and there, which was no other place than Heaven itself, they enjoyed the favours of God. The ladder was of pure gold, to signify that pilgrims must have pure hearts, and the gate to which it led was Jerusalem, the gate of heaven. Rothard, whose light went out half way, who came down in despair, was an image of those pilgrims who take the Cross but come back again in despair; and he who saw the vision and went up with Godfrey typified those Crusaders, a faithful few, who endured unto the end.

Stories are told to illustrate the prowess of this great and strong man. On one occasion, when he was compelled to defend his rights to some land by the ordeal of battle, his sword broke off short upon the buckler of his adversary, leaving him not more than six inches of steel. The knights present at the duel interposed in order to stop a combat so unequal, but Godfrey himself insisted on going on. His adversary pressed him with all his skill and strength, but Godfrey, collecting all his force, sprang upon and literally felled him to the ground. Then taking his sword from him, he broke it across his knee, and called upon the president of the duel to make such terms as would spare his enemy’s life.

Again, a noble Arab, desirous of seeing so great a warrior, paid him a visit, and asked him, as a special favour, to strike a camel with his sword. Godfrey, at a single blow, struck off the head of the beast. The Arab begged to speak apart with him, thinking it was the effect of magic, and asked him if he would do the same thing with another sword. “Lend me your own,” said Godfrey, and repeated the feat with his guest’s own sword.

At the time of his election, Godfrey was in the fulness of his strength and vigour, about forty years of age. He was tall, but not above the stature of ordinarily tall men; his countenance was handsome and attractive; and his beard and hair were a reddish brown. In manners he was courteous, and in living, simple and unostentatious. The first king of Christian Jerusalem, the only one of all the Crusaders whose life was pure, whose motives were disinterested, whose end and aim was the glory of God, was also the only king who came near the standard set up by Robert of Flanders, as one who should be foremost in virtue as well as in arms. The kingdom over which he ruled was a kingdom without frontiers, save those which the sword had made. Right and left of the path of the Crusaders, between CÆsarea and Jerusalem, the Saracens had fallen back in terror of the advancing army. The space left free was all that Godfrey could call his own. To the north, Bohemond held Antioch, Baldwin, Edessa, and Tancred was soon to occupy Galilee. Egypt threatened in the south, wild BedawÍn in the east, and on the north and north-west were gathering, disorganized as yet, but soon to assume the form of armies, the fanatic Mohammedans, maddened by their loss. It must be remembered that during the whole eighty years of its existence the kingdom of Jerusalem was never for one single moment free from war and war’s alarms.

At this time the joy of the soldiers was increased by the announcement made by a Christian inhabitant of Jerusalem that he had buried in the city, before the Crusaders came, a cross which contained a piece of the True Cross. This relic was dug up after a solemn procession, and borne in state to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where it was intrusted to the care of Arnold, who had been appointed to act in the place of the patriarch. The appetite for relics had grown en mangeant. Besides the holy lance, and this piece of the True Cross, every knight, almost every common soldier, had been enabled to enrich himself with something precious—a bone or a piece of cloth, which had once belonged to a saint, a nail which had helped to crucify him, or the axe which had beheaded him. And there can be no doubt that the possession of these relics most materially helped to inspire them with courage.

While the princes were still deliberating over the choice of a king, came the news that the Egyptian Caliph had assembled together a vast army, which was even then marching across the desert under the command of a renegade Armenian named Afdhal. He it was who had taken Jerusalem from the Turks only eleven months before the siege by the Crusaders. The army contained not only the flower of the Egyptian troops, but also many thousands of Mohammedan warriors from Damascus and Bagdad, eager to wipe out the disgrace of their defeats.

Tancred, Count Eustace of Boulogne, and Robert of Flanders, sent forward to reconnoitre, despatched a messenger to Jerusalem with the news that this innumerable army was on its way, and would be, within a few days, at the very gates of the city. The intelligence was proclaimed by heralds through the city, and at daybreak the princes went bare-footed to the Church of the Sepulchre, where they received the Eucharist before setting out on their way to Ascalon. Peter the Hermit remained in charge of the women and children, whom he led round in solemn procession to the sacred sites, there to pray for the triumph of the Christian arms. Even at this solemn moment, when the fate of the newly-born kingdom trembled on the decision of a single battle, the chiefs could not abstain from dissensions. At the last moment, Robert of Normandy and Count Raymond declared that they would not go with the army; the former because his vow was accomplished, the latter because he was still sullen over the decision of the electors. But by the entreaties of their soldiers they were persuaded to yield. The Christian army collected in its full force at Ramleh, attended by Arnold with the True Cross, whence they came to the Wady Sorek.

The battle took place on the plain of Philistia, that lovely and fertile plain which was to be reddened with blood in a hundred fights between the Christians and their foes.

The Christian army had been followed into the plain by thousands of the cattle which were grazing harmlessly over the country. The dust raised by the march of the men and beasts hung in clouds over these flocks and made the Egyptian army take them for countless squadrons of cavalry. Hasty arrangements were made. Godfrey took two thousand horse and three thousand foot to prevent a sortie of the inhabitants of Ascalon; Raymond placed himself near the seashore, between the fleet and the enemy; Tancred and the two Roberts directed the attack on the centre and right wings. In the first rank of the enemy were lines of African bowmen, black Ethiopians, terrible of visage, uttering unearthly cries, and wielding, besides their bows, strange and unnatural weapons, such as flails loaded with iron balls, with which they beat upon the armour of the knights and strove to kill the horses. The Christians charged into the thickest of these black warriors, taking them probably for real devils, whom it was a duty as well as a pleasure to destroy. A panic seized the Mohammedans; Robert Courthose, always foremost in the mÊlÉe, found himself in the presence of Afdhal himself, and seized the grand standard. And then the Egyptians all fled. Those who got to the seashore fell into the hands of Raymond, who killed all, except some who tried to swim, and were drowned in their endeavours to reach their fleet; some rushed in the direction of Ascalon and climbed up into the trees, where the Christians picked them off with arrows at their leisure; and some, laying down their arms in despair, sat still and offered no resistance, while the Christians came up and cut their throats. Afdhal, who lost his sword in the rout, fled into Ascalon, and two thousand of his men, crowding after him, were trampled under foot at the gates. From the towers of Ascalon he beheld the total rout and massacre of his splendid army and the sack of his camp. “Oh, Mohammed,” cried the despairing renegade, “can it be true that the power of the Crucified One is greater than thine?” Afdhal embarked on board the Egyptian fleet and returned alone. No one has told what was the loss sustained by the Mohammedans in this battle. They were mown down, it is said, like the wheat in the field; and those who escaped the sword perished in the desert.

It is well observed by Michault, that this is the first battle won by the Christians in which the saints took no part. Henceforth Saint George appears no more. The enthusiasm of the soldiers was kindled by religious zeal, but it is kept alive henceforth by success. When success began to fail, religion could do nothing more for them.

Raymond and Godfrey quarrelled immediately after the battle about the right of conquest over Ascalon, which Raymond wished to take for himself, and Godfrey claimed as his own. Raymond, in high dudgeon, withdrew, and took off all his troops, like Achilles. Godfrey was obliged to raise the siege of Ascalon, and followed him. On the way Raymond attacked the town of ArsÛf, but meeting with a more determined resistance than he anticipated, he continued his march, maliciously informing the garrison that they had no reason to be afraid of King Godfrey. Consequently, when Godfrey arrived, they were not afraid of him, and gave him so warm a reception that he was obliged to give up the siege, and learning the trick that Raymond had played him, flew into so mighty a passion, that he resolved to terminate the quarrel according to European fashion. Tancred and the two Roberts used all their efforts to appease the two princes, and a reconciliation was effected between them. What is more important is, that the reconciliation was loyal and sincere. Raymond gave up all his schemes of ambition in Jerusalem; ceded all pretensions to the tower of David, over which he had claimed rights of conquest, and so long as he lived was a loyal supporter of the kingdom which he had so nearly obtained for himself. But Ascalon remained untaken, a thorn in the sides of the conquerors for many years to follow, and a standing reminder of the necessity of concord.

The army returned to Jerusalem singing hymns of triumph, and entered the city with sound of clarion and display of their victorious banners. The grand standard and the sword of Afdhal were deposited in the Church of the Sepulchre; and a great service of thanksgiving was held for their deliverance from the Egyptians.

And then the princes began to think of going home again. They had now been four years away. Their vow was fulfilled. Jerusalem was freed from the yoke of the Mussulman, and they could no longer be restrained. Three hundred knights and two thousand foot-soldiers alone resolved to stay with Godfrey and share his fortunes. Among them was Tancred, almost as great a Christian hero as Godfrey himself. “Forget not,” those who remained cried with tears—these knights were not ashamed to show their emotion—to those who went away, “forget not your brethren whom you leave in exile; when you get back to Europe, fill all Christians with the desire of visiting those sacred places which we have delivered; exhort the warriors to come and fight the infidels by our side.”

So went back the Crusaders, bearing each a palm-branch from Jericho, in proof of the accomplishment of their pilgrimage. It was but a small and miserable remnant which returned of those mighty hosts which, four years before, had left the West. There was not a noble family of France but had lost its sons in the great war; there was not a woman who had not some one near and dear to her lying dead upon the plains of Syria; not even a monk who had not to mourn a brother in the flesh or a brother of the convent. Great, then, must have been the rejoicing over those who had been through all the dangers of the campaign, and now returned bringing their sheaves with them;—not of gold, for they had none; nor of rich raiment, for they were in rags—but of glory, and honour, and of precious relics, better in their simple eyes than any gold, and more priceless than any jewels. With these and their palm-branches they enriched and decorated their native churches, and the sight of them kept alive the crusading ardour even when the first soldiers were all dead.

Raymond of Toulouse went first to Constantinople, where Alexis received him with honour, and gave him the principality of Laodicea. Eustace of Boulogne went back to his patrimony, leaving his brothers in Palestine. Robert of Flanders went home to be drowned in the Marne. Robert of Normandy, to eat out his heart in Cardiff Castle. Bohemond, Tancred, and Baldwin, with Raymond, remained in the East.

The miserably small army left with King Godfrey would have ill-sufficed to defend the city, had it not been for the continual relays of pilgrims who arrived daily. These could all, at a pinch, be turned into fighting men, and when their pilgrimage was finished there were many who would remain and enter permanently into the service of the king. And this seems to have been the principal way in which the army was recruited. It was nearly always engaged in fighting or making ready for fighting, and without constant reinforcements must speedily have come to an end. A great many Christians settled in the country by degrees, and, marrying either with native Christians or others, produced a race of semi-Asiatics, called pullani,^[55] who seem to have united the vices of both sides of their descent, and to have inherited none of the virtues.

As for the people—not the Saracens, who, it must be remembered, were always the conquerors, but not always the settlers—we have little information about them. The hand of the Arab was against every man, and every man’s against his. When the pilgrims, it will be remembered, killed the sheikh at Ramleh, the Emir expressed his gratitude at being rid of his worst enemy. But, as to the villagers, the people who tilled the ground, the occupants of the soil, we know nothing of what race they were. It was four hundred years since the country had ceased to be Christian—it is hardly to be expected that the villagers were anything but Mohammedan. William of Tyre expressly calls them infidels, or Saracens, and they were certainly hostile. No Christian could travel across the country unless as one of a formidable party; and the labourers refused to cultivate the ground, in hopes of starving the Christians out: even in the towns, the walls were all so ruinous, and the defenders so few, that thieves and murderers entered by night, and no one lay down to sleep in safety. The country had been too quickly overrun, and places which had surrendered in a panic, seeing the paucity of the numbers opposed to them, began now to think how the yoke was to be shaken off.

It was at Christmas, 1099, that Baldwin of Edessa, Bohemond, and Dagobert, or Daimbert, Archbishop of Pisa, came to Jerusalem with upwards of twenty thousand pilgrims. These had suffered from cold and the attacks of Arabs, but had received relief and help from Tancred in Tiberias, and were welcomed by the king at the head of all his people, before the gates of the city. Arrived there, they chose a patriarch, electing Dagobert; and Arnold, who had never been legally elected, was deposed. They stayed during the winter, and gave the king their counsels as to the future constitution of his realm.

Godfrey employed the first six months of the year 1100 in regulating ecclesiastical affairs, the clergy being, as usual, almost incredibly greedy, and in concluding treaties with the governors of Ascalon, Acre, CÆsarea, Damascus, and Aleppo. He was showing himself as skilful in administration as he had been in war, and the Christian kingdom would doubtless have been put upon a solid and permanent footing, but for his sudden and premature death, which took place on July the 18th, 1100. His end was caused by an intermittent fever; finding that there was little hope, he caused himself to be transported from Jaffa to Jerusalem, where he breathed his last. He was buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where his epitaph might have been read up to the year 1808, when the church was destroyed by fire.

“Hic jacet inclitus dux Godefridus de Bouillon, qui totam istam terram acquisivit cultui Christiano, cujus anima regnet cum Christo.” And here, too, were laid up his sword, more trenchant than Excalibur, and the knightly spurs with which he had won more honour than King Arthur.

The Assises de Jerusalem, that most curious and instructive code of feudal law, does not belong properly to the reign of Godfrey. As it now exists it was drawn up in the fourteenth century. But it embodies, although it contains many additions and interpolations, the code which Godfrey first began, and the following kings finished. And it is based upon the idea which ruled Godfrey and his peers. It may therefore fairly be considered in this place.

It was highly necessary to have strict and clearly defined laws for this new kingdom. Its subjects were either pious and fanatic pilgrims, or unscrupulous and ambitious adventurers. Bishops and vassals, among whom the conquered lands were freely distributed, were disposed to set their suzerain at defiance, and to exalt themselves into petty kings. The pilgrims were many of them criminals of the worst kind, ready enough, when the old score was wiped out by so many prayers at sacred places, to begin a new one. They were of all countries, and spoke all languages. Their presence, useful enough when the Egyptian army had to be defeated, was a source of the greatest danger in time of peace. It is true that the time of peace was never more than a few months in duration.

The duties and rights of king, baron, and bourgeois were therefore strictly and carefully laid down in Godfrey’s Assises. Every law was written on parchment, in great letters, the first being illuminated in gold, and all the others in vermilion; on every sheet was the seal of the king; the whole was deposited in a great box in the sacred church, and called the “Letters of the Sepulchre.”

The duty of the king was to maintain the laws; to defend the church; to care for widows and orphans; to watch over the safety of the people; and to lead the army to war. The duty of the seigneur towards his people was exactly the same as that of the king; towards the king it was to serve him in war and by counsel. The duty of a subject to his lord was to defend and to revenge him; to protect the honour of his wife and daughters; to be a hostage for him in case of need; to give him his horse if he wanted one, or arms if he wanted them; and to keep faith with him. There were three courts of justice; the first presided over by the king, for the regulation of all differences between the great vassals; the second, formed of the principal inhabitants—a kind of jury—to maintain the laws among the bourgeoisie; and the third, reserved for the Oriental Christians, presided over by judges born in Syria.

The king, the summit of this feudal pyramid, who was wont to offer his crown at the Holy Sepulchre, “as a woman used to offer her male child at the Temple,” had immediately under him his seneschal, who acted as chief justice, chancellor of the exchequer, and prime minister. The constable commanded the army in the name of or in the absence of the king; he presided over the ordeal by battle, and regulated its administration. Under his orders was the marshal, who replaced him on occasion. The chamberlain’s duty was about the person of the king.

As regards the power and duties of the barons, it was ruled that they were allowed, if they pleased, to give their fiefs to the church; that the fiefs should always descend to the male heir; that the baron or seigneur should succeed to a fief alienated by the failure on the part of the feudatory to perform his duties; that the baron should be the guardian of heirs male and female. These, if male, were to present themselves when the time came, saying, “I am fully fifteen years of age,” upon which he was to invest them; while maidens were to claim their fiefs at the age of twelve, on condition that they took a husband to protect it. Nor was any woman who remained without a husband to hold a fief until she was at least sixty years of age.

In the ordeal of battle, the formula of challenge was provided, and only those were excused who had lost limbs, in battle or otherwise, women, children, and men arrived at their sixtieth year. In a criminal case death followed defeat; in a civil case, infamy.

Slaves, peasants, and captives were, like cattle, subject only to laws of buying and selling. A slave was reckoned worth a falcon; two slaves were worth a charger; the master could do exactly as he pleased with his own slaves. They were protected by the natural kindness of humanity alone. In the days of its greatest prosperity the different baronies and cities of the kingdom of Jerusalem could be called upon to furnish in all three thousand seven hundred and twenty-nine knights. But this was after the time of Godfrey, the David of the new kingdom.

Of course the seigneurs and barons took their titles from the places they held; thus we hear of the barony of Jaffa, of Galilee, of Acre, and of Nablous; the seigneur of Kerak and of ArsÛf. And thus in the soil of Palestine was planted, like some strange exotic, rare and new, the whole of the feudal system, with all its laws, its ideas, and its limitations.

The news of the recovery of Jerusalem, and the return of the triumphant Crusaders, revived the flame of crusading enthusiasm, which in the space of four years had somewhat subsided. Those who had not followed the rest in taking the Cross reproached themselves with apathy; those who had deserted the Cross were the object of contempt and scorn. More signs appeared in heaven; flames of fire in the east—probably at daybreak; passage of insects and birds—emblematic of the swarms of pilgrims which were to follow. Only when the preachers urged on their hearers to take the Cross it was no longer in the minor key of plaint and suffering; they had risen and left the waters of Babylon; they had taken down their harps from the trees and tuned them afresh; they sang, now, a song of triumph; and in place of suffering, sorrow, and humiliation, they proclaimed victory, glory, and riches. It seemed better to a European knight to be Baron of Samaria than lord of a western state; imagination magnified the splendour of Baldwin and Tancred; things far off assumed such colours as the mind pleased; and letters read from the chiefs in Palestine spoke only of spoils won in battle, of splendid victories, and of conquered lands. Again the cry was raised of Dieu le veut, and again the pilgrims, but this time in a very different spirit, poured eastwards in countless thousands.

The way was led by Hugh, Count of Vermandois and the unfortunate Stephen of Blois, whose lives had been a mere burden to them since their desertion of the Cross; the latter, who had little inclination for fighting of any kind, and still less for more hardships in the thirsty East, followed at the instigation of his wife Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror. Neither of them ever returned. William of Poitiers, like Stephen of Blois, a poet and scholar, mortgaged his estates to William Rufus, the scoffer, who, of course, was still lamentably insensible to the voice of the preacher—it must have been just before his death; Humbert of Savoy, William of Nevers, Harpin of Bourges, and Odo, Duke of Burgundy, followed his example. In Italy the Bishop of Milan, armed with a bone of Saint Ambrose, led an army of one hundred thousand pilgrims, while an immense number of Germans followed the Marshal Conrad and Wolf of Bavaria. Most of the knights professed religious zeal; but hoped, their geographical knowledge being small, to win kingdoms and duchies like those of Baldwin and Tancred. Humbert of Savoy, more honest than the others, openly ordered prayers to be put up that he might obtain a happy principality. It does not appear from history that his petition was granted.

The new army was by no means so well conducted as the old. Insolent in their confidence, and ill-disciplined, they plundered and pillaged wherever they came. They menaced Alexis Comnenus, and threatened to take and destroy the city. Alexis, it is said, but it is difficult to believe this, actually turned his wild beasts upon the mob, and his favourite lion got killed in the encounter. After prayers and presents, the Emperor persuaded his unruly guests to depart and go across the straits. Non defensoribus istis might have been the constant ejaculation of the much abused and long suffering monarch.

Then they were joined by Conrad with his Germans and Hugh with his French. Their numbers are stated at two hundred and sixty thousand, among whom was a vast number of priests, monks, women, and children. Raymond of Toulouse, who was in Constantinople, undertook reluctantly to guide the army across Asia Minor, and brought with him a few of his ProvenÇaux and a body of five hundred Turcopoles (these were light infantry, so called because they were the children of Christian women by Turkish fathers), the contingent of the Greek Emperor.

But the army was too confident to keep to the old path. They would go eastward and attack the Turks in their strongest place, even in Khorassan itself. Raymond let them have their own way, doubtless with misgiving and anxiety, and went with them. The town of Ancyra, in Paphlagonia, was attacked and taken by assault. All the people were put to death without exception. They went on farther, exulting and jubilant. Presently they found themselves surrounded by the enemy, who appeared suddenly, attacked them in clouds, and from all quarters. They were in a desert where there was little water, what there was being so rigorously watched over by the Turks that few escaped who went to seek it. They were marching over dry brushwood; the Turks set fire to it, and many perished in the flames or the smoke. There was but one thing to do, to fight the enemy. They did so, and though the victory seemed theirs, they had small cause to triumph, for division after division of their army had been forced to fly before the Turks. Still this might have been repaired. But in the night Count Raymond left them, and fled with his soldiers in the direction of Sinope. The news of this defection quickly spread. Bishops, princes, and knights, seized with a sudden panic, left baggage, tents and all, and fled away in hot haste. In the morning the Turks prepared again for battle. There was no enemy. In the camp was nothing but a shrieking, despairing multitude of monks, and women, and children. The Turks killed remorselessly, sparing none but those women who were young and beautiful. In their terror and misery the poor creatures put on hastily their finest dresses, in hopes by their beauty to win life at least, if life shameful, and hopeless, and miserable.

“Alas!” says Albert of Aix, “alas! what grief for these women so tender and so noble, led into captivity by savages so impious and so horrible! For these men had their heads shaven in front, at the sides, and at the nape, the little hair left fell behind in disorder, and in few plaits, upon their necks; their beards were thick and unkempt, and everything, with their garments, gave them the appearance of infernal and unclean spirits. There were no bounds to the cries and lamentations of these delicate women; the camp re-echoed with their groans; one had seen her husband perish, one had been left behind by hers. Some were beheaded after serving to gratify the lust of the Turks; some whose beauty had struck their eyes were reserved for a wretched captivity. After having taken so many women in the tents of the Christians, the Turks set off in pursuit of the foot-soldiers, the knights, the priests, and the monks; they struck them with the sword as a reaper cuts the wheat with his sickle; they respected neither age nor rank, they spared none but those whom they destined to be soldiers. The ground was covered with immense riches abandoned by the fugitives. Here and there were seen splendid dresses of various colours; horses and mules lay about the plain; blood inundated the roads, and the number of dead amounted to more than a hundred and sixty thousand.”

As for the arm of St. Ambrose, that was lost too, and it doubtless lies still upon the plain beyond Ancyra, waiting to work more miracles. It is exasperating to find all the chroniclers, with the exception of Albert of Aix, passing over with hardly a word of sympathy the miserable fate of the helpless women, and pouring out their regrets over this trumpery relic.

There was another army still, headed by the Duke of Nevers. They followed in the footsteps of their predecessors as far as Ancyra, where they turned southwards. Their fate was the same as that of the others: all were killed. The leader, who had fled to Germanicopolis, took some Greek soldiers as guides. These stripped him, and left him alone in the forest. He wandered about for some days, and at last found his way to Antioch, as poor and naked as any beggar in his own town.

The third and last army, headed by the Count Hugh of Vermandois, met with a similar end. Thirst, heat, and hunger destroyed their strength, for the Turks had filled the wells, destroyed the crops, and let the water out of the cisterns. On the river Halys they met their end; William of Poitiers, like the Duke of Nevers, arrived naked at Antioch. The luckless Count of Vermandois got as far as Tarsus, where he died of his wounds, and poor Ida of Austria, who came, as she thought, under the protection of the pilgrims, with all her noble ladies, was never heard of any more.

Of these three great hosts, only ten thousand managed to get to Antioch. Every one of the ladies and women who were with them perished; all the children, all the monks and priests. And of the leaders, none went back to Europe except the Count of Blandrat, who with the Bishop of Milan had headed the Lombards, the Duke of Nevers, and William of Poitiers, the troubadour.

These were the last waves of the first great storm. With the last of these three great armies died away the crusading spirit proper—that which Peter the Hermit had aroused. There could be no more any such universal enthusiasm. Once and only once again would all Europe thrill with rage and indignation. It had burned to wrest the city from the infidels; it was to burn once more, but this time with a feebler flame, and ineffectually, to wrest it a second time, when the frail and turbulent kingdom of Jerusalem should be at an end.

We have dwelt perhaps at too great length on the great Crusade which really ended with the death of Godfrey. But the centre of its aims was Jerusalem. The Christian kingdom, one of the most interesting episodes in the history of the city, cannot be understood without knowing some of the events which brought it about.