The age of the crusades

by James M. Ludlow

THE FIRST CRUSADE.

CHAPTER X.
THE CRUSADE OF THE CROWD.

The eloquence of Peter served him in the stead of more orderly methods of enlisting the people. Untrained masses of men, women, and children followed him from place to place, and about Easter to the number of upward of sixty thousand crossed the Rhine. Walter, surnamed the Penniless, assumed the leadership of the advance portion of this impatient throng. The people, however, cared little for any authority save that of the imagined divine presence, which would appear through pillars of cloud and fire to direct them in emergency. The fears of the more cautious were silenced by a saying of Solomon, “The grasshoppers have no king, yet they go forth in companies.” A goose and a goat were led at the head of the motley procession, under the fanatical delusion that in these creatures resided some super-human wisdom. It has been suggested that this superstition was due to the importation of Manichean notions, since the goose was the Egyptian symbol for the divine sonship, and the goat represented the devil—the opposing principles of good and evil as conceived by this Eastern sect.

The first vengeance of the marching crowd was inflicted upon the Jews, whose historic infidelity excited the wrath, or whose accumulated wealth tempted the cupidity, of the ill-provided host. In the cities of what is now western Germany this unfortunate people were pillaged and massacred to such an extent that, says Gibbon, “they had felt no more bloody stroke since the persecution of Hadrian.” The crusaders’ appetite for plunder thus whetted, they passed on to the ruder countries of Hungary and Bulgaria, where they took a forceful revenge upon a people of kindred Christian faith for refusing to supply them with provisions. This provoked a bloody retaliation, under which the advanced crusaders were scattered, more than two thirds of their number perishing in the defiles of the Thracian mountains.

Peter, who had delayed at Cologne, with a new German contingent followed the desolate track of his forerunners. He propitiated Coloman, the Hungarian king; but at Semlin, enraged at the marks of the discomfiture of Walter, he looted the town. At Nisch his army abused the hospitality of the Bulgarian prince, Nichita, who had given them the freedom of the market. The outraged people took terrible vengeance, and Peter’s host was driven out. At length, in sorry remnants, they reached Constantinople August (30, 1096). With the permission of the Emperor Alexius, they pitched their camp outside the city gates to wait for the new bands of crusaders.

A third horde pressed upon the footsteps of Walter and Peter, led by Gottschalk, a German priest. Reaching Hungary in the midst of the late summer harvest, they forgot their religious vows in the abundance which surrounded them, and gave themselves up to every form of debauchery. King Coloman lulled the invaders into a feeling of security until, taking advantage of a time when they were unarmed, he gave orders for their extirpation. This was not difficult to accomplish, as the followers of Gottschalk were of a lower class than even those who had preceded them, largely vagabonds and brigands, ferocious only in crime, and without the spirit of noble and sustained adventure.

A still more unconscionable crowd had in the meantime gathered on the banks of the Rhine and Moselle. A bigoted priest, Volkman, and a reprobate count, Emico, were chosen leaders. These men hoped to atone for the crimes of youth by excesses of cruelty wrought under the name of religion. This band met with terrible chastisement from the Hungarians at Merseburg. The walls of the town, which they had undermined, gave way under their assault and buried multitudes of the assailants in the falling débris. In the words of William of Tyre, the panegyrist of the later crusades, “God Himself spread terror through their ranks to punish their crimes and to fulfil the words of the Wise Man, ‘The wicked flee when no man pursueth.’” Through Bulgaria their advance was of the nature of flight to gain the sheltering walls of Constantinople.

Here, about the Greek capital, were collected the wrecks of various expeditions. If the memory of their misfortunes, augmented by their different stories of the journey, depressed and solemnized the crusaders, idleness and the sight of the riches of Constantinople inflamed their natural thirst for spoil. Homes and even churches in the suburbs were looted. The Emperor Alexius induced his unwelcome guests to cross the Bosporus into Nicomedia, where for two months he supplied their wants, as men feed wild beasts that they may not themselves fall prey to their rapacity.

The impetuosity of the crusaders was soon stirred again by their proximity to the Turks. They refortified the deserted fortress of Exerogorgo; but scarcely were they within its walls when Kilidge-Arslan (“sword of the lion”), the Sultan of Roum, laid siege to and captured the place. He then surprised the town of Civitat, outside of which the crusaders had made their chief camp. A terrible massacre ensued. Out of a numberless multitude, but three thousand remained to contemplate, instead of proud cities they had hoped to wrest from the Infidel, the piles of bones which strewed the plains of Nicæa. Walter was slain, and the town into which the miserable remnant was huddled would have fallen into the hands of the Turks but for the opportune relief afforded by the imperial troops from Constantinople. It is estimated by Gibbon that not less than three hundred thousand lives were lost in these preliminary excursions before the more orderly hosts started from western Europe.

CHAPTER XI.
THE CRUSADE UNDER THE CHIEFTAINS, GODFREY, RAYMOND, BOHEMOND, TANCRED, HUGH, ROBERT OF NORMANDY.

The age, though degenerate, had nourished an order of men of far loftier type than those we have described. Godfrey of Bouillon was the most prominent figure. The chivalric spirit of the middle ages enrolled him among the nine greatest heroes of mankind—Joshua, David, Judas Maccabæus, Hector, Alexander, Cæsar, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey. He was of noblest lineage. His father was brother-in-law to Edward the Confessor of England, and through his mother, the beautiful and saintly Ida of Lorraine, he inherited the blood of Charlemagne. He was short of stature, but of such prodigious strength that he is reputed to have divided an opponent from helmet to saddle with one blow of his sword. He was equally endowed with courage and sagacity. In his war against the rival emperor, Rudolph, Henry IV. committed the imperial standard to Godfrey, who, though but a youth of eighteen, honored this charge by penetrating to the presence of Rudolph in the thick of the battle, plunging the spear of the standard through his heart, and bearing it aloft with the blood of victory. Yet such a deed in that age did not lessen his repute for gentleness and piety. Two ancestral spirits alternated their control of him, if we are to credit the praise given him by an old chronicle of the time: “For zeal in war, behold his father; for serving God, behold his mother.” When Rome was besieged by his imperial patron, Godfrey signalized his prowess by being the first to mount the walls. This exploit, however, troubled his tender conscience as a devout Catholic, and when the crusade was proclaimed he sold his lands and devoted himself to the holy war, in attempted expiation of what he had come to regard as his former impious deeds. At the head of ten thousand horse and seventy thousand foot, he set out for the Holy Land. He was accompanied by his two brothers, Baldwin and Eustace.

Raymond of Toulouse led a second army composed of the men of Languedoc. He was the most opulent and haughty of the chieftains, as well as the most experienced in years and war. He had fought by the side of the Cid in Spain, and was haloed in popular estimate with some of the glory of that great knight. Alfonso VI. of Castile had not hesitated to bestow upon him his daughter Elvira, who shared with her husband the hazard of the expedition. One hundred thousand warriors followed in Raymond’s train as he took the cross. With him went Bishop Adhemar of Puy, the papal legate, who, in the name of the Holy Father, was the spiritual head of the combined expeditions.

Bohemond of Taranto marshalled another host. He was son of the famous Robert Guiscard, founder of the Norman kingdom of Naples. Anna Comnena thus describes him: “He was taller than the tallest by a cubit. There was an agreeability in his appearance, but the agreeability was destroyed by terror. There was something not human in that stature and look of his. His smile seemed to me alive with threat.” The fair annalist recognized Bohemond’s inheritance of his great father’s prestige and ability, and at the same time of his disposition “to regard as foes all whose dominions and riches he coveted; and was not restrained by fear of God, by man’s opinions, or by his own oaths.” Robert Guiscard had died while preparing for an attempt to capture Constantinople. With filial pride, his son Bohemond had also “sworn eternal enmity to the Greek emperors. He smiled at the idea of traversing their empire at the head of an army, and, full of confidence in his fortunes, he hoped to make for himself a kingdom before arriving at Jerusalem.” When the march of the other crusaders was reported to him, with an ostentation of piety which his subsequent career scarcely justified, Bohemond tore his own elegant mantle into tiny crosses and distributed them to his soldiers, who were at the time engaged in the less glorious attempt of reducing the Christian town of Amalfi.

Tancred de Hauteville by his splendid character amply compensated the defects of Bohemond, his kinsman. In history and romance he is celebrated as the type of the perfect soldier:

“Than whom

... is no nobler knight,

More mild in manner, fair in manly bloom,

Or more sublimely daring in the fight.”

Dissatisfied with even the ideals of Chivalry, Tancred hailed the new lustre that might be given to arms when wielded only in the cause of justice, mercy, and faith, which, perhaps too sanguinely, he foresaw in the crusade. Thus nobly seconded by Tancred, Bohemond took the field with one hundred thousand horse and twenty thousand foot.

Hugh of Vermandois, brother of Philip I. of France, led the host of Langue d’Oil, as Raymond that of Languedoc.

Robert of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror, set out with nearly all his nobles. To raise money for the expedition, he mortgaged his duchy to his brother, William Rufus of England, for ten thousand silver marks, a sum which that impious monarch raised by stripping the churches of their plate and taxing their clergy. Robert was companioned by Stephen of Blois, whose castles were “as many as the days of the year,” and by Robert of Flanders, “the lance and sword of the Christians.”

These leaders, deterred by the difficulty of obtaining sustenance for such multitudes as followed them, agreed to take separate routes, which should converge at Constantinople. Count Hugh was the first afield. He crossed the Adriatic, and after much beating by tempest gathered his men at Durazzo. Here he experienced what his comrades were continually to meet, the treachery of the Greek emperor, Alexius. Being the brother of the French king, Hugh would be a valuable possession of the Greeks, as hostage for the good behavior of his brethren. By Alexius’s order he was seized and sent without his army to Constantinople.

Godfrey’s band took the road through Hungary, already marked by the bones of the crusaders under Peter and Walter. The ghastly warnings everywhere about him encouraged him to treat with justice and kindness his coreligionists through whose lands he was journeying. He enforced strict military discipline against pillage, and appeased the wrath of the Hungarians by leaving his brother Baldwin in their hands as hostage for his good faith. But beneath the gentleness of Godfrey smouldered fiery indignation against all forms of injustice. When, therefore, he heard of the capture of Count Hugh he demanded of the emperor instant reparation, failing to receive which, he took summary revenge by laying waste the country about Adrianople. The emperor reluctantly pledged the release of Count Hugh. When the crusaders camped before Constantinople, Alexius refused to sell them provisions except on condition of their rendering homage to his throne. Several leaders had in their extremity yielded this point, but Godfrey replied by letting loose his soldiers to gather as they might; this brought Alexius to better terms.

Bohemond and Tancred crossed the sea to Durazzo and thence took the route eastward through Macedonia and Thrace. Hearing of the duplicity of Alexius, Bohemond urged Godfrey to seize upon Constantinople. Though Godfrey declined to divert his sword from the Infidels, the rumor of Bohemond’s proposal led the haughty Greek to seek closer alliance with his unwelcome guests. With stately parade, he adopted Godfrey as a son, and, in return for the formal bending of the knee at his throne, intrusted to him the defence of the empire. When Bohemond reached the Eastern court he was received with flattering protestations of friendship, which he repaid with equal adulation and as unblushing deceit. These two men at least understood each other, perhaps by that subtle instinct which leads serpents of a kind to come together.

Count Raymond had greater difficulties in leading his forces from northern Italy around the head of the Adriatic and over the mountains of Dalmatia, whose semi-savage inhabitants menaced his march. From Durazzo, he says, “right and left did the emperor’s Turks and Comans, his Pincenati and Bulgarians, lie in wait for us; and this though in his letters he spoke to us of peace and brotherhood.” The stern warrior inflicted cruel retaliation upon his assailants by cutting off the noses and ears of those he captured. On arriving at Constantinople, the irate veteran proposed to his brother chieftains to immediately sack the city. But, in spite of his severity, the blunt honesty of Raymond eventually won from Alexius more praise than did the apparent compliance of his brethren; for, says Anna Comnena, “My father knew that he [Raymond] preferred honor and truth above all things.”

The expedition of Robert of Normandy gave no credit to the crusading zeal. That chief, surnamed “Short-hose” and “the Fat,” chose the route through Italy, and justified his repute for indolence by spending the entire winter in that genial climate. Robert of Flanders and a few resolute kindred spirits shamed the lethargy of their brethren, and crossed the Adriatic in spite of wintry storms. Many others, disgusted with the general conduct of affairs, returned to their homes. It was not until after Easter in 1097 that Duke Robert and Count Stephen embarked at Brindisi.

All these armies were encumbered by the presence of women and children, since the crusading scheme proposed not only war against the Mussulman, but settlement in the lands that should be conquered. In some cases the entire population of villages and sections of cities tramped eastward, so that the movement took the character of a migration rather than that of a campaign.

The dealings of the Greek emperor with the crusaders were characteristic of the man. Alexius Comnenus had secured the throne in 1081 by successful rebellion and the capture through treachery of the capital, which he gave over to license and rapine. His subsequent policy as a ruler was in keeping with its beginning. The intrigues by which he acquired power were matched by the despotic cruelty with which he held it. His career has been depicted for us by the partial pen of his daughter Anna. Through her fulsome coloring we can detect the contemptible disposition of Alexius, and in her unblushing admissions, while purposing only to praise, we can also see much of the prevailing degeneracy of the Greek mind and conscience. Sir Walter Scott would temper our contempt for the man by the consideration that “if Alexius commonly employed cunning and dissimulation instead of wisdom, and perfidy instead of courage, his expedients were the disgrace of the age rather than his own.” But his wife, the Empress Irene, without doubt correctly summarized his personal character when, watching by his death-bed, she exclaimed, “You die as you have lived, a hypocrite.”

No doubt Alexius had reason to fear the proximity of the crusaders. In the strong figure of Gibbon, he was like the Hindu shepherd who prayed for water. Heaven turned the Ganges into his grounds and swept away his flocks and cottage in the inundation. Alexius was aware of the ambition of Bohemond to harm the Greek empire, and suspected all his comrades of similar designs. The rude manners of the invaders were also such as not to ingratiate them with the sycophancy of the court. Once, while the Franks were paying homage to the emperor, one of them unceremoniously placed himself beside his Majesty, remarking, “It is shocking that this jackanapes should be seated, while so many noble captains are standing yonder.”

Alexius was doubtless right in exacting from his visitors an oath of loyalty while within his dominions, and a pledge to turn over to him any Greek cities and fortresses they might recapture from the Turks. This was agreed to by all except Count Raymond, who declared that he would have no oath but to Christ, and invited the emperor to share with the crusaders the marches and battles against the Turks if he would divide the spoil. The ambition and cupidity of Bohemond were stayed with bribes. Thus Alexius one day introduced the Norman leader into a roomful of treasures. “Ah, here is wherewith to conquer kingdoms!” exclaimed Bohemond. The next day the treasures were transferred to his tent. The amazing request of Bohemond to be appointed Grand Domestic, or general of the Greek empire, was declined by Alexius, who had himself held that office and found it a convenient step to the throne. He, however, promised Bohemond the rule of the principality of Antioch in the event of his conquering it with his sword. Tancred, with a delicate sense of honor that shamed the truculency of his kinsman, fled the imperial lures by avoiding the city and keeping himself in disguise on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus. His example was not lost upon his fellow-chieftains, who felt the enervating influence of the daily vision of palaces, villas, gorgeous equipages, and, as the historian has fondly noted, the beauty of the women of the capital.

Alexius encouraged the virtuous purpose of the Latins to resume the crusade, from considerations of their menace to his own domain while encamped within it. With apparent magnanimity, he facilitated their crossing the Bosporus, and applauded the heroism of their start through the plains of Bithynia. In every way he fanned their enthusiasm against the Turk; but at the same time he informed the enemy of the movement of his allies, that their victories might not diminish his own prestige, and that, in the event of their discomfiture, he might profit by the friendship of the Infidel.

CHAPTER XII.
THE FALL OF NICÆA.

The first objective chosen by the crusaders was Nicæa, a city sacred with the memories of the first great ecumenical council of the Christian church, in the time of Constantine. On their march the soldiers of the cross were saddened by the continual sight of the decayed bodies of those who had fallen in the ill-advised expedition of Peter and Walter. A few survivors of this calamity, in rags and semi-starvation, came from their hiding-places to welcome their brethren. Among them was the Hermit himself. His tale of woe sharpened their zeal and encouraged their caution against the skill and bravery of the enemy.

The Infidels were under the command of Kilidge-Arslan, Sultan of Roum, still flushed with his slaughter of the first crusaders. He had fortified Nicæa, and had gathered within and about its walls sixty thousand men, drawn from all the provinces of Asia Minor and from distant Persia. May 15, 1097, the Christians sat down before the place and began the siege.

The crusading knights were clad in the hauberk, a coat of mail made of rings of steel; all wore the casque, covered with iron for common soldiers, with steel for untitled knights, and with silver to denote the princely rank. Horsemen carried round, square, or kite-shaped shields; footmen longer ones, made ordinarily of elm, which protected the entire body. Helmets of steel or chain hoods covered the head. The weapons of offence were the lance of ash tipped with steel, the sword, often of enormous length and weight, to be wielded with both hands, the axe, the mace, the poniard, the club, the sling, and, what at that time was a novelty to the Turks and Greeks, the crossbow of steel, which Anna Comnena called a “thoroughly diabolical device.” The knight’s horse was usually a heavy beast, whose tough muscles were needed to carry the weighty armament mounted upon his back, together with his own housings, which consisted of a saddle plated with steel, gathered as a breastplate in front and projecting backward so as to protect the flanks and loins. The horse’s head was likewise hooded with metal, ornamented between the eyes with a short, sharp pike like the horn of the unicorn. But, notwithstanding the burden he carried, the knight acquired by discipline a marvellous celerity of movement, often baffling the anticipation of the most wary antagonist, while in the crash of conflict he bore down his foe with superior weight. In the train of the crusading knight were carried the materials for the erection of rams with which to batter down walls, catapults to hurl huge rocks, and siege-castles, or movable towers, which overtopped the opposing defences and were provided with bridges to let down upon the walls.

The Turkish or Saracen soldier was more lightly accoutred. His horse was of more slender mould, deep-winded, and fleet of limb. In the encounter the rider depended upon the momentum acquired by celerity rather than that of weight. The long but light spear, brandished rather than couched, the crescent-shaped, slender, but well-tempered cimeter, the shield of leather, made, where attainable, of rhinoceros’s hide rather than of metal, the light bow, the quiver filled with nicely balanced arrows, the many folds of the muslin turban which protected the head from the Eastern sun—these made an almost ideal contrast with the appearance of his Western antagonist when upon the march. The armor of Christian and Moslem, so diverse, necessitated manœuvres in the battle which in their first encounters were almost equally bewildering to both contestants.

In the assault upon Nicæa the Christians numbered upward of a quarter of a million men. Against them Kilidge-Arslan had at least one hundred thousand and the advantage of the city fortifications. The place was encircled with a double line of walls, surmounted by three hundred and seventy towers, and guarded from approach by a deep canal or moat. On the east high mountains obstructed the way; on the west and south the Lake of Ascanius prevented attack, while it gave the besieged an outlet to the sea, through which they could replenish their provisions and ranks in spite of their foes.

The Christians were divided into nineteen different camps, representing as many different nations. Their habit of fighting, not on extensive battle lines, but in groups about the standards of their special leaders, gave plausibility to the declaration of Kilidge-Arslan, as he viewed the invaders from his mountain outlook, that “disorder reigned in their army” and that their very numbers insured their defeat. With tremendous vigor, he hurled his forces in two divisions upon the camps of Godfrey and Raymond. The Christians were dislodged from their defences as bowlders from their places by a spring freshet. It seemed that they must be swept away in the impetuous torrent, but quickly the tide of battle turned, and the Turks were driven back to their mountain fortresses. Again they descended, but only to cover the field with their dead, as the exhausted freshet leaves upon the ground it has inundated the débris it brought down from the hills, while the rocks it assailed still lie near the position where they sustained the assault. The brutality that distempered the age was illustrated by the Christian victors, who severed many heads from the bodies of the slain and slung them as trophies from their saddle-bows. With ghoulish pride, they hurled a thousand of them from their catapults into the city. One of these “soldiers of the cross,” Anselme of Ribemont, wrote to the Archbishop of Rheims: “Our men, returning in victory and bearing many heads fixed upon pikes, furnished a joyful spectacle for the people of God.”

One line of walls soon fell beneath the rams of the besiegers, but it only revealed another within. The Christians dragged vessels overland from Civitat (the modern Guemlik), and by night launched them upon the Lake of Ascanius, thus cutting off reinforcement for the garrison within the city. After seven weeks of almost incredible effort, Nicæa was about to fall to the reward of its Latin conquerors, when suddenly there appeared upon the ramparts numerous strange standards. To the amazement of the Christians, these proved to be not those of the Turk, but of the Greek. Alexius, conniving with the enemy, had surreptitiously introduced into Nicæa a detachment of his own troops, and thus secured the surrender to himself of what had been won by others. The rage of the crusaders knew no bounds. With the price of their blood they had gained nothing but the honor of their valor. Only the utmost discretion on the part of the chieftains prevented the army from declaring war upon Alexius and marching back to the capture of Constantinople. It afterwards transpired that Alexius’s movement had been encouraged by some of the leaders of the crusade, that their armies might not be weakened by leaving garrisons to hold the captured places.

CHAPTER XIII.
BATTLE OF DORYLÆUM—TARSUS—DEFECTION OF BALDWIN.

From Nicæa the Christians advanced (June 29, 1097) through Asia Minor towards the Holy Land. Their march was over a roadless country, threading the ravines and climbing the precipices of mountains, across plains desolated by the retreating foe, under the burning heat of the midsummer sun, and exposed to the guerilla attacks of a half-beaten enemy, whose main army was rapidly recruiting and waiting with double its former numbers to renew the battle.

In order to procure provisions, the crusaders divided their forces—one band under Bohemond, Tancred, Count Hugh, and Robert of Normandy, the other under Godfrey, Raymond, Adhemar, and Robert of Flanders. The former had camped with confident security in a little valley near Dorylæum in Phrygia. On the morning of July 1st sudden clouds of dust appeared on the height above, and a storm of arrows and missiles announced the attack of Kilidge-Arslan. Bohemond had scarcely arranged his people for battle when the Turks were upon him. With their lighter armor and swifter steeds, they circled about the Christians, delivering volleys of arrows, and escaping before the assault could be returned, as hawks might assail a lion. If a valiant band of Christians pursued them they dispersed in every direction, only to form again in a circle and repeat their murderous attack. Many of the most valiant Christian knights fell without being able to return a stroke. The Turkish numbers were being constantly augmented by new arrivals. Kilidge-Arslan, at the head of a body of his braves, made a sudden raid upon the Christian camp, massacring the men and children and carrying off the women for his seraglios.

But a bitter vengeance was taken. Robert of Normandy, snatching his white banner, drove through the densest ranks of the foe with the watchword of “Deus vult!” followed by Tancred, who was made doubly valiant by having seen his brother William fall, pierced with arrows. The captives were rescued, but the crusaders were exhausted, and retired in despair behind the stockade of their camp. At noon, however, the air was rent with new trumpet-calls. The hilltop shone with the armor of the knights under Godfrey. The charge of this redoubtable warrior and fifty chosen comrades broke upon the Turks like a thunderbolt. The opportune arrival of Raymond gave the crusaders fifty thousand fresh horsemen, who pursued the now panic-stricken enemy over the mountain. Three thousand Turkish officers and a measureless multitude of men were slain. The camp of Kilidge-Arslan was taken, and the crusaders pursued their way, laden with provision and treasures. Mounted on the horses of their foes, they pursued the flying remnant. To complete the enthusiasm of victory, it was alleged that St. George and St. Demetrius had been seen fighting in the Christian ranks. For many generations the peasants of that neighborhood believed that once a year St. George, on horseback, with lance in hand, could be seen by the worshippers in the little church which was erected on the spot to commemorate his timely apparition.

The crusaders marched from the field of Dorylæum to new terrors, against which it was not the province of sword or lance to contend. The scattered Turks devastated the country along the line of march. Neither field nor bin was left to be plundered. The roots of wild plants were at times the only food of the pursuers. The July sun, always terrific in what the ancients called “burning Phrygia,” beat upon them with unusual balefulness. Falcons, which the knights had brought along to relieve the tedium of the journey, fell dead from their masters’ arms. Many women gave untimely birth to offspring, which perished in their first efforts to inhale the hot atmosphere. Five hundred of the hapless multitude died between a sunrise and sunset. One day some dogs, which had wandered off, returned with moist sand upon their paw’s and coats; they had found water. Following the trail of the brutes, the soldiers discovered a mountain stream. The men plunged into it and drank so abundantly that the multitude became water drunk; thus three hundred perished with the fever flush of new-found life.

Passing through Cilicia, the advance under Tancred captured Tarsus, the birthplace of St. Paul. But Baldwin, brother of Godfrey, contested with Tancred the honor of its possession and a share of its spoil. Tancred refused to allow either his own men or those of Baldwin to loot the place, saying that he had not taken arms to pillage Christians. His flag was torn from the ramparts and flung into the ditch. By a display of moral courage equal to his physical prowess, Tancred restrained his resentment, that the Christian host might not be divided. Baldwin, left in possession of a part of the town, refused admission to a company of crusaders, who, thus left exposed without the walls, were massacred by the Turks. Popular indignation ran high against Baldwin, which he ultimately assuaged by taking a horrible vengeance upon the Turks remaining in Tarsus, not one of whom he left alive.

The crusaders at Tarsus received reinforcements by the arrival of a fleet of Flemish and Dutch pirates, who, by the bribe of expected spoil, were induced to sew the cross upon their garments.

Leaving a garrison in this city, Baldwin followed eastward in the track of Tancred, whom he overtook at Malmistra. The rage of the soldiers of Tancred against him could not be checked by the mild counsel of their leader, whom they taunted with weakness. For once the self-restraint of Tancred gave way. He led his men against Baldwin. A pitched battle ensued, followed on the morrow by the embrace of the leaders in the presence of their troops, and vows to expiate their mutual offences in fresh blood of the common enemy.

The popularity of Tancred ill suited the ambition of his rival. Baldwin, seemingly stung by the withdrawal of the confidence of his brethren, nursed the project of leaving the crusading army and setting up a kingdom for himself. He offered his aid to Thoros, the Armenian Prince of Edessa, in Mesopotamia, who was at that time warring on his own account against the Turks beyond the Euphrates. None of the crusading chiefs seconded Baldwin’s project. With eighty knights and one thousand foot-soldiers, he traversed the deserts. Upon his arrival at Edessa, in the strange custom of the country the aged Thoros and his wife pressed the count to their naked breasts, thus acknowledging him as son by adoption. The fable of him who had warmed a serpent in his bosom only to feel its sting was repeated in this case. With Baldwin’s knowledge, if not with his connivance, an insurrection was stirred against Thoros, which resulted in his being flung from the wall of his own castle.

Baldwin, thus installed in chief authority, confirmed his hold upon the people by marrying an Armenian princess. All Mesopotamia acknowledged him, and a Frankish knight was seen reigning on the Euphrates over the richest part of ancient Assyria.

The defection of Baldwin was not ultimately detrimental to the crusades, since his kingdom made a barrier on the north and east against the Turkish and Saracenic hordes, and prevented their interfering more readily with the Christians’ march upon Jerusalem, of which Baldwin himself was one day to be king.

CHAPTER XIV.
BEFORE ANTIOCH.

The crusading hosts passed, with incredible toil and suffering, through the remainder of Asia Minor. The perils of the Taurus chain of mountains nearly brought them to despair. Borne down with their heavy arms, encumbered with thousands of women and children, they passed along paths which the practised feet of mountaineers were alone fitted to tread. In the defiles were left many who could not climb the precipitous rocks, which thus became the walls of their tomb. At the base of the palisades were heaps of armor, which their wearers were too spiritless to recover. But in spite of the despair of many, the leaders evidently did not leave the spoil of war to rust or decay in the cañons of the Taurus. Stephen of Blois wrote to his wife a few weeks later than the events we are describing: “You may know for certain, my beloved, that of gold, silver, and many other kinds of riches I now have twice as much as your love had assigned to me when I left you.”

At length the survivors emerged to look down from the mountains upon the borders of Syria. The sight inspired them as that from Pisgah did the invader of old. Courage revived, and with joy they hastened southward. Hard by was the battle-field of Issus, where Alexander the Great, the man from the West, had broken the power of the East under Xerxes—an omen of its repetition. Soon Antioch, the city built to commemorate the fame of Antiochus, one of Alexander’s generals, stood before them. The rumor of their invincibility had served the crusaders in the stead of battles, and October 21, 1097, they sat down unmolested for the siege of the Syrian capital.

This city, where a thousand years before believers were first called Christians, still wore in the reverence of all the world the honor of that initial christening. It was called the “Eldest Daughter of Sion,” and was the seat of one of the original patriarchates into which the early church was divided. It had been the third city of the Roman world, and those who were unimpressed with its sacred story could imagine its splendor when it was called the “Queen of the East.” Paganism once worshipped obscene divinities in its famous groves of Daphne. About it still stood the enormous wall built by the Emperor Justinian five hundred years before, on every tower of which were mementos of sieges when it had been captured alternately by Saracen and Greek, and now, but thirteen years before the crusaders’ coming, by Solyman, the Turk.

The natural defences of Antioch, supplemented by those of art, made it impregnable, except to the enthusiastic faith of such men as now essayed its capture. On the north it was guarded by the river Orontes, on the south by natural heights of several hundred feet, on the west by the great citadel, and on the east by a castle. The wall which bound together the various fortifications was nine miles in extent, strengthened by three hundred and sixty towers. A deep cleft in the southern height poured a mountain torrent through the city to the Orontes. Accian, grandson of Malek-Shah, had twenty thousand Turks within the walls, who behind such battlements were presumably the match for the three hundred thousand crusaders who are said to have been without.

To the sanguine enthusiasm of the Christians the city seemed like a ripened fruit ready to fall into the hand at a touch. Guards appeared upon the walls, but the challenge of their camps provoked no response. This the Christians interpreted as a sign of the feebleness and dismay of the garrison. They were disposed to wait for the fruit to fall of itself. The genial influence of the climate soon wrought its softness into nerve and spirit. Discipline was relaxed; knights whose shields showed many a dent of conflict spent the hours among the vineyards, where the luscious clusters still hung upon their stems. Adventure found its pastime in discovering the vaults in which the peasants had hidden their grain. If we could believe the theory that good and evil people leave in the places they frequent an atmosphere of virtue or vice, to invigorate or infect the souls of those who come after them, we might think that the soldiers of the cross had succumbed to the influence of the votaries of Venus and Adonis, who anciently revelled in the grove of Daphne; for the Christian host became infatuated with unseemly pleasures; they were given over to intemperance and debauchery. An arch-deacon was not ashamed to be seen in dalliance with a Syrian nymph.

If the leaders did not yield to the prevalent vice, they seem to have been infected with that intellectual dulness and lethargy of purpose which follows license. They neglected to prepare their siege machinery, and when a momentary enthusiasm led them to attack the walls they paid for their temerity with failure. The enemy became correspondingly emboldened, and retaliated with fearful forays through the Christian lines. With the approach of winter the crusaders had exhausted their provisions, and the country about furnished no more. Heavy rainfalls reduced their camps to swamps, in which the bow lost its stiffness, and the body its vigor, making the men the prey of diseases which kept them busy burying their dead.

Stories of disasters to the cause elsewhere floated to them, until the air seemed laden with evil omens. Sweno, Prince of Denmark, had advanced through Cappadocia. At his side was Florine, daughter of Count Eudes of Burgundy, his affianced bride. Together they fought their way through countless swarms of Turks, until, with all their attendant knights, they were slain. The body of this heroic woman showed that seven arrows had penetrated her armor. News also came that fleets of Pisans and Genoese, their allies, had withdrawn from the coast, lured by better prospects of gain than in bringing succor to what seemed a ruined cause.

Such was the moral depression that Robert of Normandy deserted for a while, until shame brought him back. His example was followed even by Peter the Hermit, “a star fallen from heaven,” says Guibert, the eye-witness and chronicler. Peter, however, returned at the entreaty of Tancred, whose heart was as true in trouble as his eye was keen in the mêlée. The Hermit was made to take oath never again to desert the cause he had once so eloquently proclaimed. The piety of Adhemar, Bishop of Puy, instituted fasts and penitential processions around the camp, to purge it of iniquity and to avert the wrath of Heaven. The practical judgment of the chieftains enacted terrible punishments to curb the unreasoning debauchery. The drunkard was cropped of his hair, the gambler branded with a hot iron, the adulterer stripped naked and beaten in the presence of the camp. The Syrian spies who were caught were, by order of Bohemond, spitted and roasted, and this proclamation was posted over them: “In this manner all spies shall make meat for us with their bodies.”

About this time there arrived in the camp an embassy from the caliph of Egypt. The race of Ali hated the Turks as the usurpers of the headship of their faith, and proposed alliance with the Christians to expel them from Jerusalem. They stipulated for themselves the sovereignty of Palestine, and would grant to the disciples of Jesus perpetual privilege of pilgrimage to the sacred places. If this offer of the caliph was declined, the ambassadors presented the alternative of war, not only with the Turks, but with the combined Saracen world from Gibraltar to Bagdad. The Christian reply was bold. Their orators taunted the Egyptians with the diabolical cruelty they had once practised when Jerusalem was under Hakim, and declared that they would brave the wrath of the Moslem world rather than permit a stone of the sacred city to be possessed by an enemy of their faith. This reply was saved from seeming bravado by an opportune victory. Bohemond and Raymond met and cut to pieces a Moslem force of twenty thousand horsemen, who were advancing from the north for the relief of Antioch. As the ambassadors of Egypt were embarking, they were presented with four camel-loads of human heads, to impress their master with the sincerity of the Christian boast, while hundreds more of these ghastly tokens were stuck upon pikes before the walls or flung by the ballistæ into the city to terrorize the defendants.

The fearfulness of their extremity animated the courage of the Turks as it had often done that of the Christians; for brave hearts are the same, under whatever faith and culture. They sallied from the gates, which by the orders of Accian were closed behind them until they should return as victors. At nightfall, however, but few lived to seek the entrance.

Their valor was doubtless as fine as that of the Christians, the exploits of whose leaders have come to us in story and song. Tancred’s deeds were so great that, either from excessive modesty or the fear that nobody would believe such wonders, he exacted a promise of his squire never to tell what his master had wrought. If his great actions were like most reported of his comrades, we can admire his wisdom as well as his humility; for the legends of the battle tell, among other wonders, of a monster Turk who was cloven in twain by the sword of Godfrey, and one half of whose lifeless body rode his charger back to the gate. A less glorious exploit is mentioned. The Christians rifled by night the new-made graves of the Moslems, and paraded the next day in the clothes of the fallen braves, carrying upon their pikes instead of garlands fifteen hundred heads they had severed from the corpses. A more romantic scene makes a pleasant foil to this: the children of either side, drilled by their seniors, engaged in battle in presence of both armies. Hands that could not use the sword thrust with the dagger, and the poisoned tip of the arrow was not less deadly because it was sent from a tiny bow.

CHAPTER XV.
THE FALL OF ANTIOCH.

After seven months of valorous assault and defence, Antioch at length was gained. It fell, however, not as the prize of honorable conquest, but as the price of treachery, disgraceful to both those within and those without the walls. Phirous, an Armenian Christian, had abjured his faith in order to secure promotion in the Turkish service. In reward he was given position, and now commanded three of the principal towers. Divining a similar, if not equal, unconscionableness in Bohemond, Phirous made known to him his willingness to recant his new vows as a Moslem and again betray his trust for larger reward in the Christian ranks. Bohemond announced to the other chiefs his possession of a secret by which Antioch might easily be taken, but refused to reveal it except upon their agreement to assign to him the independent sovereignty of the Syrian capital. The proposal at first met with the contempt and rage of his fellow-leaders, which were expressed to his face in the hot words of Raymond, who declared that Bohemond proposed to “repay with the conquests of valor some shameful artifice worthy of women.” Bohemond was as brazen as he was brave, and endured this insult. Reports became rife that Kerbogha, Sultan of Mosul, was advancing to the relief of his coreligionists. Bohemond, through his emissaries, magnified the alarm until the besiegers anticipated the attack of an army of two hundred thousand, whose cimeters were dripping with the blood of victory over all the peoples west of the Euphrates. Under this menace the chiefs chose the valor of discretion, and, not without lamentation at the shameful necessity, yielded to the ambition of their comrade.

The scheme of Phirous came near miscarriage at the very moment of execution. Accian, the commandant at Antioch, suspicious of treachery, ordered all the Christians in the city to be seized and massacred that very night. Summoning Phirous, he subjected him to severest examination, but the shrewdness of the wretch completely veiled his duplicity. Phirous tried to induce his own brother to join him in his treachery. The man refused, and, lest he should reveal the plot, Phirous plunged his dagger to his heart.

A comet, which had appeared in the early evening sky, was regarded as an omen favorable to the scheme. The subsequent dense darkness of the night and the roar of sudden storm shielded the forms and drowned the footfalls of the plotters. At a given signal Phirous dropped from the wall a ladder of leather, which was quickly mounted by one of Bohemond’s men. As the traitor Phirous stood by the parapet conversing with the intruders, he was startled by the glare of a lantern in the hand of an officer making his round of inspection, but his ready tact diverted suspicion. The agent of Bohemond descended the ladder and reported all in readiness for the assault; but the Christians were held back by a strange spell. Men who were accustomed to brave death without a question at the command of their princes, could not be prevailed upon by either threatening or promise to venture into this unknown danger. Moral courage is the strongest stimulus to physical daring, and this treacherous project failed to supply the heroic incentive. Bohemond himself was compelled to set the perilous example; but no one followed until he descended to assure them by his presence that he had not fallen into some deadly trap. Then one by one the bravest knights, such as Foulcher of Chartres and the Count of Flanders, emulated Bohemond’s bravery. The parapet was overweighted by the assailants, who were massed upon its edge, and gave way, precipitating many upon the lance-points of those below them. But the thunders of the storm drowned the crash of the falling masonry. Securing the three towers of Phirous’s command, the crusaders opened the city gates to the dense ranks that waited without.

With the cry of “Deus vult! Deus vult!” the infuriated multitude poured into the city. The Moslems, as they came from their homes and barracks at the rude awakening, were slaughtered without having time for resistance. Through all houses not marked by some symbol of the Christian faith the crusaders raged; cruelty and lust knew no restraint. The dawn revealed over six thousand corpses in the streets. Accian escaped the Christian soldiers, only to meet a less honorable death at the hands of a woodman while in flight through the forest. Phirous was abundantly rewarded for his treachery, but two years later he reëmbraced Moslemism in expectation of larger gains. In the anathemas of Christian and paynim he was consigned to the hell in which both believed.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE HOLY LANCE.

The elation of the crusaders over the possession of Antioch was of briefest duration. Their three days’ license, in the enjoyment of what they had so ingloriously won, was terminated on the fourth day by fearful menace. Kerbogha was really coming. To his own veteran experience he added the wisdom of the most redoubtable sultans and emirs of Syria, Asia Minor, and Persia, who commanded an army of one hundred thousand horse and three hundred thousand foot. So stealthily had they approached that the news was conveyed to the Christians only by their observing from the walls the advance of the mighty host as it dashed through the camps but recently consecrated to the cross. Quickly the Moslems completed their investment of the city. The Christians could make no foray over the fields, and no provisions were allowed to reach them from the port. To add to their fears, the citadel of Antioch had not fallen into their hands with the rest of the city, and was still occupied by watchful foes. They were thus assailed from without and from within the walls.

The gay robes, costly gems, and arms which the Christians had taken were no compensation for the lack of provisions. Godfrey paid fifteen silver marks for the flesh of a half-starved camel. Knights killed for meat the proud chargers they loved oftentimes more than they did their companions in arms, who were now their greedy contestants for what scanty provision remained. Common soldiers gnawed the leather off shoes and shields, and some dug from the graves and devoured the putrid flesh of the Turks they had slain. We might doubt this horrible deed were not similar acts of cannibalism confessed by Godfrey and Raymond in a letter to the Pope, written a year later. Every morning revealed the numbers of those who had deserted during the night, among whom were some of the most famous warriors, such as the counts of Melun and Blois and Chartres. In the general despair even faith gave way. Men cursed the God who had deserted them while they were defending His cause, and the priests hesitated to perform the rites of religion among a people who had become as infidel as the foe they sought to destroy.

The Greek emperor, Alexius, started out from Constantinople with an army, but upon hearing of the desperate straits of the Latins returned, leaving them to their fate. The Christians, it is said, offered to capitulate to Kerbogha upon condition of being permitted to return to Europe in abandonment of the crusades. Godfrey and Adhemar, the one in the name of all that was valiant among men, the other as the representative of the Pope, presumably speaking for Heaven, remonstrated in vain. The refusal of even so much mercy by the Moslems alone prevented the consummation of this disgrace. The warriors who had won the applause of Europe then sat sullenly in their houses and could not be prevailed upon to fight along the walls, believing that additional wounds would only protract their woe without averting the final catastrophe.

In this hour of abject despair the besieged were reinspirited by an occasion which is as much the marvel of the psychologist as of the historian. In the prostration of bodily nature through hunger and disease, imagination often tyrannizes the faculties. Man becomes the prey of unrealities; his dreams create a new world, generally of terror, but often of hope. Then it is that the demons and angels of theory materialize into seeming facts. Thus the emaciated men in the beleaguered camp were ready to believe the story of a priest, who related that Christ had appeared to him, denouncing destruction upon His faithless followers, but that at the intercession of the Virgin Mary the Lord was appeased, and promised immediate victory if the soldiers of His cross would once more valiantly endeavor to merit it. At the same time two deserters returned to the camp, relating how the Saviour had met them and turned them back from flight. But the crowning miracle was revealed to the priest, Peter Barthelemi. St. Andrew appeared to him and said, “Go to the church of my brother St. Peter in Antioch. Near the principal altar you will find, by digging into the earth, the iron head of the lance which pierced the side of our Redeemer. Within three days this instrument of salvation shall be manifested to His disciples. This mystical iron, borne at the head of the army, shall effect the deliverance of the Christians and shall pierce the hearts of the Infidels.” For two days the people fasted; on the morning of the third day twelve trusty knights and ecclesiastics dug at the appointed spot, while the multitude remained in silence and prayer about the church. All day long they waited. At midnight there was no response to their expectation. As the twelve ceased their labors, and were bowed in renewed petition around the excavation, Peter Barthelemi suddenly leaped into the hole. In a moment he reappeared bearing a lance-head in his hands. The news spread through the city as if shouted by angels. The effect upon the desponding minds of the soldiers was like the revival of life in the dead bodies of Ezekiel’s valley of vision. Some, it is true, shook their heads, or, like Foulcher of Chartres, declared that the lance had been concealed by Barthelemi in the designated place. Whether really credulous, or shrewd enough to try any new expedient, the leaders were loudest in heralding the discovery as miraculous.

Peter the Hermit was sent to announce to the Moslems the decree of Heaven for their immediate overthrow. Sultan Kerbogha, however, proved a match for the zealot in vituperative bravado and religious devotion. He haughtily declared but one condition of his raising the siege, namely, the acknowledgment by the Christians that “Allah is great, and Mohammed is His prophet.” “Bid thy companions,” said he to Peter, “take advantage of my clemency; to-morrow they shall leave Antioch only under the sword. They will then see if their crucified God, who could not save Himself from the cross, can save them from the fate I have prepared for them.” With that he drove Peter and his band of deputies back to their walls.

The Christians ate that night what they deliberately called their last supper in Antioch. With the remnant of bread and wine they celebrated mass. At dawn the city gates were thrown open, and in twelve divisions the host marched out, following the standard of the Holy Lance. The clergy went first, as in the days of Jehoshaphat, singing their faith in coming victory. The words of the psalm, “Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered,” seemed to be answered by invisible hosts on the mountains, who took up the crusaders’ war-cry of “Deus vult!” Excited imaginations saw the mountains filled with the chariots of the Lord, as in the days of Elisha. But to the eye of flesh the Christian host presented a sorry spectacle. Many limped with wounds or trudged slowly from weakness; most were in rags, many were stark naked. The prancing charger had been changed for a camel or ass, and many a knight was reduced to the condition of a foot-soldier, and shouldered his spear.

Sultan Kerbogha haughtily refused to leave a game of chess he was playing, to listen to what he supposed would be an entreaty for mercy from the entire Christian army, that was coming to throw itself at his feet; but he was soon undeceived. With sudden dash, Count Hugh attacked and cut to pieces two thousand of the enemy who guarded the bridge before the city. The main body of Christians formed against the mountains and, thus shielded from a rear attack, advanced steadily upon the foe. The surprise of Kerbogha did not prevent that experienced soldier from seeing the advantage gained by his assailants. Under flag of truce he proposed to decide the issue by battle between an equal number of braves selected from either side. The enthusiasm of the Christian host forbade such a limitation of the honor of attaining what seemed to all a certain victory. Heaven gave manifest token of favor in a strong wind, that sped the missiles of the crusaders, while it retarded those of their foes. In vain did Kerbogha storm them in front, while Kilidge-Arslan, having climbed the mountain, attacked their rear. The Turks had fired the bushes to bewilder the Christians, but through a dense smoke there appeared a squadron descending the mountains, led by three horsemen in white and lustrous armor. These were recognized as St. George, St. Demetrius, and St. Theodore, the same materialized spirits that had been seen upon the plains of Nicæa. With a superhuman fury and strength, the Christians broke upon the Moslems as a tornado upon a forest, making through the opposing ranks a path of utter destruction. When this breath of heaven had passed one hundred thousand Infidels lay dead upon the field. Fifteen thousand camels, a proportionate number of horses, immense stores of provisions, and priceless treasures enriched the victors. The tent of Kerbogha, capable of covering over two thousand persons, glowing like a vast gem with jewels and tapestries, was taken and sent to Italy, where the sight of it inflamed the greed of new bands of crusaders.

Those who are disinclined to believe in the heavenly portents that aided the Christians may content themselves with the explanation which the Moslem writers give of their defeat. They relate that the Arabs had quarrelled with the Turks, and retired from the field before the battle; that the latter pursued their coreligionists more bitterly than they fought the common enemy. The credulity of the Christians also abated when they discovered that the camps of Kerbogha were more adorned than fortified. Then, too, they recalled the skill and courage of their own assault, and listened to the thousand stories of the Christians’ exploit from the lips of the performers. Pride, if not reason, triumphed over superstition, and the Holy Lance fell into disparagement. A letter from the leaders to Pope Urban, written from Antioch just after this battle acknowledged that the divine weapon “restored our strength and courage”; but the writers are more particular to tell how “we had learned the tactics of the foe” and, “by the grace and mercy of God, succeeded in making them unite at one point.” Later the Christian host was divided into two parties, who contended violently for and against the credibility of the miracle. Normans and the crusaders from the north of France were rationalistically inclined, while the men from the south adhered to the story as told by their geographical representative, Peter Barthelemi, the priest from Marseilles, who had discovered the sacred symbol. The veracity of Peter was finally subjected to trial by Ordeal. A vast pile of olive-branches was erected. A passage several feet in width was left through the middle of the heap. When the wood had been fired, Peter appeared, bearing the Holy Lance. As he faced the flames a herald cried, “If this man has seen Jesus Christ face to face, and if the Apostle Andrew did reveal to him the divine lance, may he pass safe and sound through the flames; but if, on the contrary, he be guilty of falsehood, may he be burned.” The assembled host bowed and answered, “Amen.” Peter ran with his best speed down the fiery aisle. The furious heat impeded him. He seemed to have fallen, and disappeared amid the crackling branches and smoke. At length, however, he emerged at the other end of the flaming avenue amid the cries of his partisans, “A miracle! a miracle!” Yet the test was indecisive, for, while Peter succeeded in running the gantlet, he was terribly burned, and was carried in mortal agony to the tent of Raymond, where a few days later he expired. It is to be noted that from that time the Holy Lance wrought no more miracles, even in the credulity of its most reverent adorers.

CHAPTER XVII.
ON TO JERUSALEM.

The zeal of the mass of crusaders urged them to an immediate advance upon Jerusalem. This, however, was opposed by the discretion of Godfrey, who predicted the hardship of the campaign in a Syrian midsummer. The evident dissensions among the Moslems and their apathy in further warfare, if they gave opportunity for rapid conquest by the Christians, at the same time allayed the feeling of necessity for immediate advance. It was therefore resolved to postpone the enterprise southward until November.

While waiting for the order to march, an epidemic broke out in the camps, which was more fatal than would have been any perils of the journey. Upward of fifty thousand perished in a month, among them Adhemar, Bishop of Puy, the special representative of the Holy Father, and the spiritual head of the crusade. Idleness also engendered strife among brethren. Bohemond and Raymond threatened each other with the sword. Common soldiers fought in opposing bands for the possession of the booty captured in their raids. Restless spirits, disgusted with the general apathy, joined Baldwin, now the master of Edessa. Some made alliance with such Moslems as were at war with their fellow-Moslems. Even Godfrey fought for the emir of Hezas against Redowan, Sultan of Aleppo.

Heaven also seemed to have become impatient at the inaction of the crusaders. A luminous mass, as if all the stars had combined their fires, like a suspended thunderbolt, glared down from the sky upon the quiet ramparts of Antioch. Suddenly it burst and scattered in sparks through the air. Did it mean that God was about to thus disperse the Christians, or that He would scatter their enemies? The omen, though not clearly interpreted, sufficed to rouse the indolent host.

Raymond and Bohemond, with worthy compeers, assaulted Maarah, between Hamath and Aleppo. A novelty of the defence of this place was the hurling upon the assailants of hives filled with stinging bees. The resistance of the inhabitants, however, proved unavailing, and was punished by their indiscriminate massacre when the city had been gained. A dispute between Raymond and Bohemond for sole possession of what they had jointly conquered delayed further operations, until the soldiers who were left in Maarah with their own hands destroyed the fortifications, and thus rendered it useless to the ambition of either of the leaders.

It was not until far into the year that the united host took up the march southward. Everywhere they were lured from their grand objective, the sacred city, by the sight of goodly lands and strong towers, the spoil or possession of which might compensate the sacrifices of the campaign. Raymond laid siege to Arkas, at the foot of the Lebanons; others captured Tortosa.

While detained before the walls of Arkas they were met by an embassy from the caliph of Egypt, composed of the same persons that had previously visited the camp at Antioch. They narrated how they had been thrown into prison because of the failure of their former mission, when their master heard of the straits of the Christians; and how they had been liberated and sent back upon his hearing of the subsequent triumph of the Latins. They announced that Jerusalem had recently come into the hands of the Egyptians, and as its new possessors, proposed peace and privilege of pilgrimage to all who should enter the city without arms. They offered splendid bribes to the chieftains in person; but these worthies rejected the proposal.

The fame of the Christians’ victory at Antioch brought new crusaders from Europe, among them Edgar Atheling, the last Saxon claimant of the crown of England against its possession by William the Conqueror.

On the way southward the hosts harvested the groves of olives and oranges, and the waving fields which have always enriched the western slopes of Lebanon. They discovered a rare plant, juicy and sweet, refreshing like wine and nourishing as corn. The inhabitants called it zucra. The later crusaders introduced it as the sugar-cane into Italy. Proceeding along or near to the coast, that they might be able to receive succor from over the sea, they traversed the plain of Berytus (Beirut) and the territory of Tyre and Sidon. Many pilgrims, whose zealotry had led them to settle in the Holy Land notwithstanding its hostile possession, hailed their brethren with benedictions and provisions. On the bank of the river Eleuctra their camp was invaded by hosts of serpents, whose bite was followed by violent and often mortal pains. At Ptolemaïs (Jean d’Acre) the commanding emir averted assault by pledging himself to surrender the place as soon as he should learn that the Christians had taken Jerusalem. His pretence of peaceableness was singularly exposed. A hawk was seen to fly aloft with a dove in its talons. By strange chance the lifeless bird fell amid a group of crusaders. It proved to be a carrier-pigeon, whose peculiar instinct was then unknown to Europeans. Under its wing was a letter written by the emir of Ptolemaïs to the emir of Cæsarea, containing the words: “The cursed race of Christians has just passed through my territories and will soon cross yours. Let all our chiefs be warned and prepare to crush them.” This timely revelation of the treachery of their assumed ally, coming literally down from the sky, was regarded as a special sign of Heaven’s favor.

Pressing still southward, they captured Lydda and Ramleh, on the road between Jaffa and Jerusalem. Here the enthusiasm of the Christians blinded their judgment. It was with difficulty that the more cautious leaders restrained the multitude from moving against Egypt, in the vain expectation of conquering not only Jerusalem, but the ancient empire of the Pharaohs, at a single swoop. The credulity as to Heaven’s favor was matched by an equal display of very earthly motives. The crusaders devised a system for dividing the spoil. Whatever leader first planted his standard upon a city, or his mark upon the door of a house, was to be regarded as its legitimate owner. This appeal to human greed led many to leave the direct march upon Jerusalem, which was but sixteen miles away, and to expend in petty conquests or robberies the ardor which for weary months had been augmenting as they approached the grand object of the crusades. A faithful multitude, however, pushed on. They took off their shoes as they realized that they were on holy ground. Tancred, with a band of three hundred, making a circuit southward by night, set the standard of the cross on the walls of Bethlehem, to signal the birth of the kingdom in the birthplace of its King.

On the morning of June 10, 1099, the sight of the Holy City broke upon the view. The shout of the host, “Deus vult! Deus vult!” rolled over the intervening hills like the “noise of many waters.” Had a host of angels filled the sky, it would have seemed to their enthusiastic souls but a fitting concomitant of their approach. The joy of the apparent accomplishment of their purpose was, however, followed by the affliction of their souls, as the most devout among them reminded the others of the spiritual significance of the scene before them. Jerusalem had witnessed the death of their Lord. For a while the soldier remembered only that he was a pilgrim; knight and pikeman knelt together and laid their faces in the dust.

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM.

The Egyptian commandant of Jerusalem had not idly awaited the slow approach of its assailants. He had stored it abundantly with provisions, strengthened the walls with masonry and defensive machines, and by appeals to Moslems everywhere had completed its garrison. The suburban country was reduced to a desert, stripped of all vegetation which could furnish food for man or beast; all standing trees, and the timber in houses that might be wrought into machinery of assault, were destroyed. The wells in the valleys were filled with stones, and poison thrown into the cisterns where water had been stored.

Possibly the knowledge that the district about Jerusalem could furnish them no help led the leaders to listen to the counsel of a solitary hermit who dwelt on the Mount of Olives, and who promised in Christ’s name a successful assault if undertaken at once. It does not seem clear how an army without siege apparatus could take a place so strongly fortified. On the east the vast walls, rising from the valley of Jehoshaphat, were too lofty to tempt the most daring. Those on the south, overlooking the Kidron, were not less impregnable. The crusading army took every possibility of approach into consideration, and in imitation of Vespasian and Titus a thousand years before, stretched their lines on the north and west of the city. But only a blind faith in divine assistance could have led to the assault, even on these sides, without battering-rams or scaling-ladders. Yet at the trumpet’s call the Christians advanced. They joined their shields into a roof, which was a poor defence against the stones and boiling oil that descended upon them. Still the front ranks dug into the walls with pikes and axes, while the rear ranks of archers and slingers endeavored to drive the foe from the ramparts above. A few, finding a solitary ladder, mounted the walls, but were unable to withstand the crowd of Infidels who met them. In deep discouragement, they abandoned the assault, having learned the lesson that, even at Jerusalem, Heaven assures no enterprise which is conceived regardless of human discretion.

Events soon occurred which turned this distrust of miraculous intervention into a belief that Heaven was actually fighting against the Christians. It was a summer of fearful heat even for that land. Tasso’s description of those fiery days is as truthful as it is poetic:

“The fair flowers languish, the green turf turns brown,

The leaves fall yellow from their sapless sprays;

Earth gapes in chinks; th’ exhausted fountain plays

No more its music; shrunk the stream and lakes;

The barren cloud, in air expanded, takes

Semblance of sheeted fire, and parts in scarlet flakes.

Not a bird’s fluttering, not an insect’s hum,

Breaks the still void; or, on its sultry gloom

If winds intrude, ’tis only such as come

From the hot sands, sirocco or simoom,

Which, blown in stifling gusts, the springs of life consume.”

Jerusalem Delivered, canto xiii.

To avoid the burning atmosphere which drained their blood, men buried themselves naked in the ground. At night they sought to gather the dew, with which to moisten their lips. Those who found some tiny pool fought among themselves for the possession of its foul water. It seemed that the very “stars fought in their courses” against the people of God, as once against Sisera. The occasional raids of Moslems upon defenceless bands of Christians, as they wandered in search of relief, were magnified by general fear into the approach of vast armies. It was rumored that Egypt had massed its power and was approaching from the south.

But for opportune relief it is probable that the crusaders would have been compelled to raise the siege. At the most critical moment some Genoese ships entered Jaffa. Three hundred of the bravest knights fought their way through the Moslems who obstructed the road to the coast, and succeeded in bringing to the camp before Jerusalem a quantity of provisions and material for siege machinery, as well as a number of skilled engineers and artisans. They were unable to prevent the ships being destroyed by the enemy. Gathering new courage from this reinforcement, a band penetrated to the forests of Samaria, full thirty miles distant, and cut timber, which, with incredible toil, they brought back for the construction of battering-rams, catapults, and strong roofs under which to conduct their renewed operations. Among the most formidable contrivances was the movable tower, three stories high, within the base of which men worked with levers to move the structure close to the walls, while on the upper floors soldiers were massed, who at the lowering of the drawbridge descended upon the ramparts.

Encouraged by this material aid, the crusaders again sought the heavenly succor. They remembered that Joshua combined faith with valor, and that, having invested Jericho with prayers and psalms, its walls fell down. They would now repeat the experiment. For three days they held a solemn fast. On the fourth, preceded by the priests bearing images of the saints, with song and cymbals and trumpet, and burnished arms flashing in the hot air, they set out for the mystic investment of the frowning walls of Jerusalem. Beginning on the west, the procession moved northward. The entire army worshipped prostrate at the tombs of St. Mary and St. Stephen. Bending their course to the southeast, they wept at the reputed garden of Gethsemane. They then went up the Mount of Olives, and there, on the spot whence Christ had ascended, held a grand convocation. At their feet lay the landscape, hallowed by the exploits of Hebrew patriots and prophets, but chiefly by the footprints of the Son of God. On the one hand gleamed the Jordan and the Dead Sea; on the other was Jerusalem, like an altar overturned and desecrated by the presence of the heathen. Their most eloquent orator, Arnold de Rohes, harangued them as he pointed to the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the grand objective of all their toil, heroism, and piety. Chieftains who had long cherished mutual animosity, like Tancred and Raymond, stood together in the embrace of forgiveness and the pledge to forget all their differences, while their hearts were reunited as in a celestial flame.

The Moslems themselves added fuel to the fire of Christian enthusiasm by parading on the walls of the city with crosses, which they saluted with blasphemous gestures and cries. Peter the Hermit voiced the fresh fury which swayed all breasts. He cried, “Ye see, ye hear, the blasphemies of the enemies of God. Swear to defend the Christ, a second time a prisoner, crucified afresh. I swear by your faith, I swear by your arms, that these mosques shall again serve for temples of the true God.”

Descending from the Mount of Olives, the procession moved southward, paying reverence at the Pool of Siloam and the tomb of David. As the red sun was setting in the white gleam of the Mediterranean, the host returned to their camps on the west of the city, chanting the words of Isaiah: “So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and His glory from the rising of the sun.” In strange attestation of the unity of religious sentiment in antagonistic faiths, the songs of the Christians were echoed from the city by the voices of the muezzins, who, from the minarets of mosques, called their faithful to prayer.

During the night Godfrey made a rapid change in his point of attack, so that in the morning the bewildered Moslems saw the walls threatened where they had made little preparation for defence. A great ravine which thwarted the operations of Raymond was quickly filled by the multitude, who rushed amid the thick rain of arrows, carrying stones, which they threw into it.

At daybreak, July 14, 1099, as from a single impulse, the rams began their blows; the catapults and ballistæ filled the air with flying stones and blazing combustibles, and a storm of arrows swept the walls. The assault was met with equal skill and courage, and night fell upon an indecisive engagement. Raymond’s tower had been destroyed, and those of Godfrey and Tancred were injured so that they could not be moved.

The 15th of July witnessed a repetition of the carnage. The priests kept up an unceasing procession of prayer around the city, a pious exhibition, which was matched by the appearance on the walls of two Moslem sorceresses, who, as the Christians said, invoked the aid of nature and demons. In vain was the heroism and sacrifices of the crusaders. Their towers were burned and fell, burying their defenders beneath the blazing fagots. The host was beginning to withdraw from the seemingly useless slaughter. Suddenly the cry, “Look! look!” directed all eyes towards the Mount of Olives. The imagination of some one had seen—or his shrewdness, recalling the ruse of the Holy Lance at Antioch, had invented—the apparition of a gigantic knight on the sacred mount, waving his shield. The cry of “St. George! St. George!” rent the air. A timely change in the wind blew the flames and smoke of the Christians’ remaining towers towards the walls. The Moslems were blinded and choked as by the breath of unearthly spirits. Godfrey’s men rushed upon them, drove them from their defences, and, climbing over the wall, pursued them down through the streets of the city. Tancred obtained a similar advantage, and in another torrent poured his contingent over the northern end of the ramparts. The Christians within the city opened the gates, and new tides of slaughter and victory rolled among the houses. Last of all, Raymond carried the battlements which opposed him; thus the various bands met within the city. One rally of the Moslems checked but for an instant the inevitable result.

The valor of this last effort of the defendants might have elicited the magnanimity of the victors for so worthy a foe, but it only enraged their brutality. They who paused long enough in the carnage to remember that it was Friday, and the very hour when Christ died in love for all men, did not remember the simplest precepts of their holy religion, and visited their now unresisting enemies with slaughter unsurpassed in the annals of cruelty. Neither age nor sex was spared. Children’s brains were dashed out against the stones, or their living bodies were whirled in demoniacal sport from the walls. Women were outraged. Men were prodded with spears over the battlements upon other spears below, or were reserved to be roasted by slow fires amid the mockeries of their captors. In the letter sent by Godfrey and others to the Pope occur these words: “If you desire to know what was done with the enemy who were found there, know that in Solomon’s porch and in his temple our men rode in the blood of the Saracen up to the knees of their horses.”

Both Latin and Oriental historians give seventy thousand as the number of Mussulmans who were massacred after the capture, besides those who fell in the fight. It is certain that the entire population that did not escape from the city were intended for death, for such was the deliberate decree of the council of chiefs. The blood-crazed soldiers extended the scope of this outrageous mandate to include the Jews, who perished in the flames of their synagogue. From their hiding-places in mosques, homes, and the vast underground vaults, the citizens were plucked out by the point of the lance and sword. Thus many a Moslem died in the confirmed belief of the superior humanity of his own religion, though it was called the religion of the sword.

The only apology for this cruelty that can be given is the brutality of manhood in these dark ages. The gentler Christianity of earlier days had been sadly changed by the propensities of the semi-barbaric Northern conquerors who embraced it. The church had as yet been able to affect the masses with only its dogmas and ritual, not with its deeper and more truly religious influence for the restraint of passion and the tuition of the sentiment of love. The military spirit, too, had allied itself with the ecclesiastical; as Milman says, “The knight before the battle was as devout as the bishop; the bishop in the battle no less ferocious than the knight.” The truth of this is evident from the fact that contemporary writers do not attempt to excuse it, but glory in sights the imagination of which appals our modern sensibilities. Raymond d’Agiles, an eye-witness, speaks with pleasantry of the headless trunks and bodies dancing on ropes from the turrets. The ghost of the dead Adhemar was seen in his ecclesiastical robes partaking of the triumph, but those who describe the vision report no rebuke from his lips for the carnage. Tancred and Raymond of Toulouse alone seem to have raised any voice of mercy, and they suffered the imputation of mercenary motives for their clemency.

Jerusalem was given over to the Christian spoilers. Every man secured possession of the dwelling upon which he first set his mark or name. To Tancred’s share fell the entire furniture of the mosque of Omar, six chariot-loads of gold and silver candelabra and other ornaments. With characteristic generosity, he divided the booty with Godfrey and many private soldiers, reserving fifty marks of gold for the redecoration of the Christian churches. But most precious to their credulity was the True Cross, alleged to have been miraculously discovered by Helena, the mother of Constantine, in the fourth century, which, having been stolen by Chosroes the Persian, had been restored to the sacred city by Heraclius.

CHAPTER XIX.
GODFREY, FIRST BARON OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE—CONQUEST OF THE LAND—THE KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM.

When wearied with gathering the spoil the crusaders deliberated how best to secure their possessions. This could be done only by maintaining peace within the city and adequate defence against the armies of the Infidels, who would undoubtedly rise to assail them from without.

Their first business was the selection of a king of Jerusalem. The popularity of Godfrey, merited by his genius, bravery, and devotion, readily suggested his name to the ten electors who were chosen to voice the suffrage of the host. To secure his enthusiastic reception by the people, he did not need additional arguments drawn from imagined revelations of the will of Heaven. Yet visions were invoked to confirm the judgment of human discretion. One reported that he had seen Godfrey enthroned in the sun, while numberless flocks of birds from all lands came and nestled at his feet. This was interpreted to mean the coming glory of Jerusalem and the crowds of pilgrims who should be safe beneath his sway. Godfrey modestly declined the royal title, accepting only that of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre, saying that he would not wear a crown of gold in the city where Christ had worn only a crown of thorns (July 22, 1099).

With less unanimity and only after unseemly brawls, which were in strange contrast with the orderly arrangement of their secular affairs, Arnold de Rohes, the eloquent but dissolute ecclesiastic, was selected by the priests as Patriarch of Jerusalem.

With true statesmanlike purpose, Godfrey addressed himself to the organization of the political and military government of his new dominion. He had, however, little time to devote to the peaceful progress of his kingdom. Raymond diverted his chief’s attention more by plots of ambition and jealousy than he aided him by wisdom of counsel. Multitudes of Christians resident in the East, excited to become such by the fame of the conquests of the crusaders, poured into the city and vicinage, and thus added to the governor’s cares.

At the same time the Mussulmans, quickly recuperating from their despair, inaugurated new campaigns. The Turks and Persians laid aside their jealousy of the Egyptians, and poured southward and westward to join the army of the caliph of Cairo. Afdhal, already famous for having wrested Jerusalem from the Turks, gathered the warriors of Islam of all tribes and races, from the Nile to the Tigris. His advancing army was supported by a vast fleet, which had been laden at Alexandria and Damietta with provisions and siege apparatus for a second capture of what to them, as well as to the Christians, was the sacred city.

Learning that the Moslems had reached Gaza, Godfrey set forth to meet them, with Tancred as his most worthy coadjutant. Raymond, having quarrelled with Godfrey about the independent possession of the tower of David, sulked in his house, and Robert of Normandy also refused to march to the aid of Godfrey. These leaders were, however, at length driven from the city by the taunts of the priests and the women. Their martial pride was also stirred by the message of Godfrey that a battle was imminent. The crusaders made their camp at Ramleh, and August 11th advanced towards Ascalon. By the banks of the wadi Surak they captured immense herds of camels, oxen, and sheep, which encouraged them as much, doubtless, as did the wood of the True Cross that was carried through the ranks. The herds also seemed to be marshalled by a special providence as their rearward. We must describe this in the words of Godfrey: “When we advanced to battle, wonderful to relate, the camels formed in many squadrons, and the sheep and oxen did the same. Moreover, these animals accompanied us, halting when we halted, advancing when we advanced, and charging when we charged.” The enormous dust-clouds raised by the herds led the Moslems to take them for a contingent of the Christian force, which imagination magnified to many times its real numbers. A paralysis of fear fell upon the Infidels. Most of them, being fresh troops, had never met the crusaders in battle, and had dared the issue, relying upon their own superiority in numbers. Now that this dependence seemingly failed them, they anticipated defeat at the hands of the heroes of Nicæa and Antioch and Jerusalem, and stood nerveless before the attack. The Christians, coming near, fell every man upon his knees in prayer, then rose to make the charge. Raymond struck the column of Turks and Persians; Tancred led his braves through the Moors and Egyptians; Godfrey crushed the Ethiopians, who resisted him but for an instant with their long flails armed with balls of iron; Robert of Normandy wrested the standard from the hands of Afdhal himself. As the Moslems cast away their bows and javelins to hasten their flight, the Christians cast away theirs that they might speed the pursuit with the sword. Back they drove the Infidels against the walls of Ascalon. Two thousand were trampled or suffocated in the crowd that choked the gate; multitudes, avoiding the city, were driven into the sea and were drowned. The panic communicated itself to the Egyptian sailors on the fleet, who spread their sails and disappeared over the sea, leaving the Moslem soldiers no opportunity of escape. Godfrey says: “There were not in our army more than five thousand horsemen and fifteen thousand foot-soldiers, and there were probably of the enemy one hundred thousand horsemen and four hundred thousand foot-soldiers.... More than one hundred thousand perished by the sword; and if many of ours had not been detained plundering the camp, few of the great multitude would have escaped.”

Raymond claimed the city of Ascalon for his own possession. Godfrey declared that all conquests belonged to their common kingdom of Jerusalem. Raymond, in mean revenge, encouraged the Moslems not to surrender their stronghold, which still resisted. By similar counsel he prevailed upon the Saracen garrison of Arsuf to hold out. Godfrey could not restrain his anger at this treachery, and turned his arms upon his old comrade. Tancred and Robert of Normandy threw themselves between the swords of the combatants and effected their reconciliation.

With the victory at Ascalon (August 19, 1099) the first crusade may be said to have terminated. The events of the subsequent year relate to the history of the new kingdom of Jerusalem. The closing months of the eleventh century witnessed the return of the mass of crusaders to their European homes. In almost every castle and hamlet of France the thrilling events of three years were narrated by those whose scars corroborated the story of their valor and sufferings. Nearly every family remembered a father, a brother, or a son as a martyr, or rejoiced in his return renowned as a hero or revered as a saint.

Few of the leaders enlarged their repute by any subsequent actions. Peter the Hermit ended his days at advanced age in the monastery of Huy, which his renown for sanctity had enabled him to found. Robert of Normandy seems to have exhausted all the manliness of his nature in his Eastern adventures. He allowed an amour to detain him in Italy for more than a year, during which time his brother Henry took the throne of England on the death of William Rufus, a reward which might easily have come to Robert, had he shown disposition to defend his right of inheritance. Henry wrested from him even his duchy of Normandy, and confined him in the castle of Cardiff, where he died after twenty-eight years of captivity.

Raymond retired to Laodicea, the government of which he had secured. From this place he was summoned to command new bands of crusaders. Multitudes set out under him. Some followed Stephen of Blois, brother to the French king, whose desertion of the crusaders brought upon him such dishonor that he was eager to restore his repute by a second enlistment. William, Count of Poitiers, Lord of France, reputed as the first of the Troubadours, departed with a retinue of soldiers and girls. A German horde was led by Conrad, the marshal of the empire. Italians followed Anselm, Archbishop of Milan, in whose train were lords, knights, and noble ladies, among them the Princess Ida of Austria.

These various bands, like the earlier crusaders, met at Constantinople, repeating the annoyance to the Emperor Alexius, who begged Raymond to relieve him of their presence. This veteran accepted the duty, bearing with him the Holy Lance that had wrought wonders at Antioch, and which Raymond regarded as a match for the arm of St. Ambrose that the Archbishop of Milan had brought from his cathedral.

This march eastward was without discipline, monks and women often filling the places of soldiers. Kilidge-Arslan, the Sultan of Iconium, burned with desire to avenge his defeat three years before at Nicæa. Kerbogha, Sultan of Mosul, was equally inflamed to wipe out his disgrace at Antioch. These joined their forces and overwhelmed the Christians at the river Halys. The massacre almost amounted to extermination. Raymond fled with the other leaders. The Turks repeated their assault upon a second army, under the Count de Nevers, at Ancyra, with similar results. And again they administered their terrible vengeance upon a third army, under the Count of Poitiers, the Duke of Bavaria, and Count Hugh of Vermandois, of whose reputed one hundred and fifty thousand scarcely one thousand escaped. The leaders found a sorry refuge in rags and wounds at Tarsus and Antioch. The women, among them the Princess Ida, disappeared within the curtains of numberless harems. A forlorn remnant reached Jerusalem, to add, perhaps, more to the care than to the assistance of Godfrey.

The rule of Godfrey as Baron of the Holy Sepulchre was brief, but such as to promise, had his career been extended to even the age of most of his companions, a record worthy of the greatest of kings. Despising the mere gilding of a throne, he sought to strengthen his government by the best laws known to Europe, as well as to guard and extend his power by the sword.

The latter was, however, the first and pressing necessity. The departure of the crusading hosts left him but three hundred knights with their retainers, out of six hundred thousand who during three years had taken the cross. His strongholds were, besides Jerusalem, a score of towns scattered over the vicinage of the capital, in many cases antagonized by the still remaining fortresses of the Infidels. The country between these towns was open to the passage of his foes. The land was untilled, and offered scanty provision for his people. To prevent a further exodus of Christians, it was enacted that land could be acquired in ownership only after a year’s continuous occupancy, and would be alienated by a year’s absence.

Tancred was as Godfrey’s right hand. These two men stand out together as preëminent for their moral qualities among many as brave as they in merely physical prowess. To Tancred was assigned the principality of Tiberias, the possession of which he quickly acquired with his sword. Godfrey at the same time forced the acknowledgment of his government by exacting tribute from the Arabs west of the Jordan, and from the emirs along the coast of the Mediterranean. One city, Asur (Arsuf), refused submission and maintained its independence in spite of siege. The spirit of Godfrey was strangely tried here by an incident. Gerard of Avernes had been given up by Godfrey as a hostage for his clemency and justice in dealing with the people of the town. While the arrows of the Christians were sweeping the walls, Gerard was placed unshielded at a point where they were falling thickest, that his danger might divert the assault. Godfrey, coming near, cried aloud to him, “If my own brother were in your place I could not cease my attack; die, then, as a brave knight.” Gerard accepted his martyrdom, and fell beneath the missiles of his friends.

To Jerusalem came a multitude of pilgrims, among them Dagobert (Daimbert) as special legate from the Pope. By virtue of his high office he claimed for himself the patriarchate of Jerusalem, together with the secular sovereignty of Jaffa and the section of the sacred city in which was located the Holy Sepulchre. Following further the policy of the popes to make their dominion a world monarchy, secular as well as spiritual, Dagobert required Godfrey to acknowledge himself a temporal vassal of the pontiff, and to pledge to the patriarch the sovereignty of the kingdom in the event of Godfrey dying without children. Bohemond, as Prince of Antioch, and Baldwin, Prince of Edessa, brother of Godfrey, and Raymond, now of Laodicea, were at the time visiting Jerusalem. These also made their submission, and received their governments anew from the Holy Father.

With the counsel of these and others, his wisest advisers, Godfrey inaugurated the system of laws afterwards known as the Assizes of Jerusalem. They were not completed until a subsequent century, but their inception belongs to his statesmanship. These regulations are interesting as reflecting in brief compass the best customs of Europe. Their study may, therefore, be on that wider field. The Assizes were a sort of written constitution, and when prepared the original document was placed with solemn pomp in the archives of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

But the reign begun under such favorable auspices was suddenly terminated. Returning from an expedition for the succor of Tancred, Godfrey accepted the hospitality of the emir of Cæsarea, and immediately falling ill, his sickness was accredited to poisoned fruit. He died soon after reaching his capital (June 18, 1100), at the early age of thirty-eight. In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is still to be seen his tomb, near by that of his Lord, which he had given his brief but brave life to rescue and defend.

Godfrey’s preëminence among the original crusader chieftains was due not so much to any single virtue in which he was their superior as to a rare combination of many excellent qualities. It was said of him that he was the peer of Raymond in counsel and of Tancred in the field. To this we may add that for piety he outshone Adhemar the priest. In the midst of the fight he would pause for prayer to the God of battles; and his meditation on sacred themes was ordinarily prolonged far beyond the hours prescribed for devotion by the church. His nature was gentler and more just than that of his companions. If at times his actions were cruel, they might be attributed rather to the habit of the age than to his own inclination. Since he surpassed his generation in so many respects, it would be neither just nor generous to criticise his defects. In him we see the budding of a better type of humanity amid the prevailing grossness of animalism and superstition.

CHAPTER XX.
BALDWIN I., KING OF JERUSALEM.

In strange contrast with Godfrey was his brother Baldwin, the Prince of Edessa, whom the necessities of the infant kingdom, rather than his own merits, now called to the vacant throne. Baldwin had already shown himself as unscrupulous as he was alert, and as covetous as he was bold. With undoubted adroitness and courage, he had acquired and held his principality of Edessa. Here he reigned with Oriental pomp, wore long robes and flowing beard, sat cross-legged on rugs, and compelled all suppliants for his favor to approach with the salaam of profoundest homage. This ostentation was apparently more from policy among a people familiar with such customs than from love of display or any despotic instinct.

Dagobert, the papal legate, opposed the suggestion of Baldwin’s kingship of Jerusalem, and claimed that honor for himself. He might have obtained it had not Garnier, the agent of Baldwin, seized upon the tower of David and the other fortresses in the name of his absent master. The baffled prelate called upon Bohemond, now Prince of Antioch, to come and avenge this insult offered to the Holy Father in the person of his legate; but the Turks, by capturing Bohemond, interfered with this plan. The activity shown by the common enemy decided the popular voice for Baldwin as king. The dangers which threatened forbade that the government of Jerusalem should be left in the hands of a priest untrained in war. The soldier seemed pointed out by Providence for the kingship, although the hand of the Pope was stretched out to anoint another.

Baldwin, learning of the death of Godfrey, immediately turned over the government of Edessa to his cousin, Baldwin du Bourg, and with fourteen hundred men marched for Jerusalem. On the way he gave new proof of his puissance by first outwitting and then utterly routing vastly superior numbers, with which the emirs of Damascus and Emesa endeavored to block his way. Pausing at the sacred city only long enough to assure himself of the applause of the entire population, he gave another exhibition of his merit of the crown before wearing it. With a sudden swoop he devastated the enemy’s country from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, and, laden with booty, demanded and received from the hands of the unwilling prelate the crown and blessing in the name of the Pope. Quickly following the coronation services at Bethlehem, he captured Arsuf and Cæsarea. An Egyptian army had advanced as far as Ramleh, but Baldwin, with a white kerchief tied to his lance’s point as his oriflamme, led his braves again and again through this host, until they were routed, leaving five thousand dead on the field. Amid the shrieks of the dying the king caught the subdued cry of a woman. She was the wife of a Moslem, who had accompanied her husband to the war, and had been taken with the pains of childbirth. By the conqueror’s order she was tenderly cared for, placed upon the rug from his own tent, covered with his own mantle, and later conducted with her new-born babe to the arms of her husband. His compassion soon received its reward. The rallying Mussulmans surrounded his band not only with swords, but with fire, having ignited the long, dried grass. With difficulty the king escaped to Ramleh, which the enemy completely invested. During the night, while anticipating the fateful assault of the morrow, he was secretly approached by a Moslem officer. This man proved to be the husband of the woman whom Baldwin had befriended. Led by his gratitude, he had put his own life in jeopardy in order to reveal to his benefactor a secret path to safety. The Moslem assault carried the town; they put to death all Christians found within it. In Jerusalem the great bell tolled, while the people crowded the churches or marched in procession, mourning the supposed death of their king, when suddenly came the news of Baldwin’s safety. In the rhetoric of the chronicle, it was “like the morning star out of the night’s blackness.”

The capture of Ramleh by the enemy endangered Jaffa, the real port of Jerusalem, at which the kingdom was in touch with Europe. Baldwin made his way in disguise to Arsuf. Embarking with Godric, an English pirate, he sailed straight through the Egyptian galleys that guarded the harbor of Jaffa. In June, 1102, with forces augmented from an English fleet under Harding, he assailed the enemy. The Patriarch of Jerusalem carried the wood of the True Cross. With the cry, “Christus regnat! Vincet! Imperat!” which subsequently appeared as the legend on the gold coins of France, the besieged became the victors. But the joy of the triumph when the king returned to Jerusalem was marred by the memory of the many slain; Stephen of Blois and Stephen of Burgundy, with a great number of the bravest knights, had fallen.

The Greek emperor, Alexius, while sending congratulation to the Christians, could not repress his jealousy of their victories. He prepared to assail Antioch; he negotiated with the captors of Bohemond for his ransom, that he might secure from his gratitude the title to the city which that chieftain held. Bohemond, however, ransomed himself by pledges to the emir who held him, and, after having endured a captivity of four years, defended his city in battles by sea and land from the treachery of the Greeks. At the same time, with other chieftains, he carried arms into Mesopotamia. At Charan he barely escaped in company with Tancred, while their companions, Josselin de Courtenay and Baldwin du Bourg, were dungeoned at Mosul.

In view of his exhausted resources, Bohemond attempted a vast and romantic scheme for their recuperation. Having floated a report of his death, he concealed himself in a coffin and passed through the watchful fleet of the Greeks, who cursed his imagined corpse. Arriving in Italy, he secured a new commission from the Pope. In France he so ingratiated himself with King Philip I. as to secure that monarch’s daughter, the Princess Constance, to wife. He then raised a new army of crusaders. In Spain and Italy he augmented this force, and embarking at Bari, he attempted to take a bitter retaliation on the empire of the Greeks. His expedition against Durazzo failed of success. Bohemond, at the moment when his ambition was at the point of its extremest satisfaction, returned to die in his own Italian dominion of Taranto.

The kingdom of Jerusalem was reduced to all sorts of expedients to raise the means of its support and extension. King Baldwin recouped his treasury by marriage with Adela, widow of Count Roger of Sicily. Her vast wealth was heralded by the vessel in which she sailed, whose mast was incased in gold and whose hold was laden with gems and coin. A thousand trained warriors followed, at her expense. Either the drain upon her purse or the incompatibility of her relations with the king led her to leave him after three years and return to Italy.

With the assistance of Genoese fleets, Ptolemaïs was captured. The mutual jealousies between the Turks and the Egyptians enabled the Christians to secure the southern coast of Palestine. Raymond having died before the walls of Tripoli, his son Bertrand captured that city, which from that time became the titular possession of his family. An immense library of Persian, Arabic, and Egyptian manuscripts was by the illiterate Christians given to the flames. Biblus and Beirut also fell before the standard of the cross. With the aid of a fleet and ten thousand men, under Sigur of Norway, Sidon was quickly acquired.

But in the midst of these triumphs came an irreparable loss. Tancred, the ideal of knighthood, died (December 12, 1112). His genius and sword had conquered widely in northern Syria. His memory has been embalmed, while his real virtues, which needed no untruthful praises, have been exaggerated in poetry and romance since Chaucer sang of him as “a very parfite, gentil knight.”

The loss of Tancred was felt especially in the north, where the Christians soon after met a fearful defeat at Mount Tabor. In extremity they made alliance with the Saracens of Damascus and Mesopotamia, under the Sultan of Bagdad.

The jealousy among the Moslems giving him seeming security from attack on the north, King Baldwin planned the invasion of Egypt. He crossed the desert and appeared within three days’ journey of Cairo. While returning from a raid, laden with spoil and flushed with the anticipation of soon adding the land of the Nile to his possessions, the king fell sick. Nominating Baldwin du Bourg for his successor, he died at the edge of the desert (1118). His body was brought, in obedience to his dying request, and deposited beside that of Godfrey, near to the Holy Sepulchre.

CHAPTER XXI.
KING BALDWIN II.—KING FOULQUE—KING BALDWIN III.—EXPLOITS OF ZENGHI—RISE OF NOURREDIN.

Baldwin du Bourg was elected to the vacant throne of Jerusalem, Eustace, brother of Godfrey, having declined to contest it, magnanimously saying to his partisans, “Not by me shall a stumbling-block enter into the Lord’s kingdom.” Baldwin II. was well advanced in years, experienced in council and in field, having been one of the companions of Godfrey in the first crusade, and during the reign of Baldwin I. having held the government of Edessa. In contrast with his predecessor, he was painstaking in planning, cautious in executing, and withal a man of deep religious devotion.

In April, 1123, while attempting the relief of Count Josselin, who had been taken prisoner at Khartpert by Balek the Turkoman, King Baldwin II. was captured and confined in the same city. A devoted band of Armenians entered Khartpert in the disguise of merchants, and succeeded in liberating Josselin, but the king was carried away to Harran for safer keeping.

The absence of Baldwin II. was measurably compensated by the vigor and astuteness of Eustace Grenier, who was elected to the regency. The Egyptians had massed themselves in the plains of Ascalon for an advance against Jerusalem. After a fast, which was so rigorously enforced that mothers did not suckle their babes, and cattle were driven to sterile places beyond their pasturage, the army of Christians marched from the city at the sound of the great bell. The patriarch carried the wood of the True Cross, another dignitary bore the Holy Lance, another a vase containing milk from the breast of the Virgin Mary. The credulity which devised these expedients of victory might readily see, as reported, a celestial thunderbolt fall upon the army of the Infidels. It is enough for history to record that the Christians were triumphant.

The Genoese and Pisans had often brought assistance to the crusaders and great gain to themselves by the part they took in these holy wars. The Venetians, however, having profitable commerce with the Saracens, were not at first tempted to hazard a rupture with them. At length they too sought the new adventure. In the warlike temper of the age, the Venetian fleet, in command of the doge, Domenicho Michaeli, did not hesitate to attack a returning Genoese fleet for the sake of its plunder. Having robbed and murdered their coreligionists, they repeated the raid upon an Egyptian fleet which was leaving the mouth of the Nile. With appetites thus whetted, they proposed to the regency at Jerusalem to sell themselves to the service of God for one third the territory they might acquire conjointly with the crusaders. The terms being accepted, an innocent child drew the lot which should show the will of Heaven as to whether Ascalon or Tyre were the better prize. Tyre was indicated, and six months after (July 7, 1124) fell to gratify the greed of Venice and the pride of the people of Jerusalem.

A month later King Baldwin II. secured his liberation. In 1129 he strengthened his throne by the marriage of his daughter, Melisende, to Foulque of Anjou, son of the notorious Bertrade, who had deserted her legitimate husband for the embrace of King Philip of France. This monarch had put away his wife Bertha for this new union. Thus was brought upon Philip the famous excommunication of the Pope. Two years later (August 13, 1131) Baldwin II. died and was buried with Godfrey and Baldwin I. in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Foulque ascended the throne. His first work was to settle a dispute for the lordship of Antioch, which was accomplished only after bloodshed between brethren. Next he baffled the Greek emperor, John Comnenus, who attempted to gain for himself the kingdom of Jerusalem. Later he made alliance with the Mussulman Prince of Damascus and fought against Zenghi, Prince of Mosul. His queen, Melisende, by her rumored amours brought him additional perplexity. King Foulque died from an injury while hunting (November 13, 1143), leaving two children, Baldwin and Amalric.

Baldwin III. succeeded his father at the age of thirteen, with Melisende as regent. Effeminacy not only marked the government, but infected the spirit of the people. The heroism of the founders of the kingdom seemed to die in the blood of their successors, or, if danger fired the ancient valor, it was without the light of discretion.

Young Baldwin III. inaugurated his reign by a foolish expedition to take Bozrah, which had been offered in surrender by its traitorous commandant. To accomplish this it was necessary to break a fair and useful alliance which the Christians had made with the Sultan of Damascus, the rightful lord of Bozrah. On reaching Bozrah, instead of the keys of the city, there was placed in the hands of the king an announcement from the wife of the treacherous governor that she herself would defend the walls. The perplexity of the king and his equally callow advisers was followed by an ignoble retreat. The enemy pursued not only with sword, but with fire. The wind, which seemed to the retreating army to be the breath of God’s wrath, covered them with smoke and cinders, while the flames of the burning grass chased their fleeing feet. The Christians would have perished had not, say the chronicles, the wood of the True Cross, raised with prayer, changed the direction of the breeze and beaten back the pursuers.

At this time there was felt the need of an astute mind at the head of the kingdom. Christian progress had been arrested, and events of evil omen were thickening.

The star of Zenghi, the ruler of Mosul, the father of Nourredin, and the forerunner of Saladin, had arisen. This redoubtable warrior had conquered all his Moslem rivals on the Euphrates; he had swept with resistless fury westward, capturing Aleppo (1128), Hamah (1129), and Athareb (1130). Though the Moslems had been assisted by Baldwin II., yet the Oriental writers sang of how the “swords of Allah found their scabbards in the neck of His foes.” In 1144, one year from young Baldwin’s coronation, Zenghi appeared before the walls of Edessa, which since the early days of the crusades had been in the possession of the Christians. This city was the bulwark of the Christian kingdom in the East; it is thus described in the florid language of the place and time: “I was as a queen in the midst of her court; sixty towns standing around me formed my train; my altars, loaded with treasure, shed their splendor afar and appeared to be the abode of angels. I surpassed in magnificence the proudest cities of Asia, and I was as a celestial ornament raised upon the bosom of the earth.”

Had old Josselin de Courtenay been living, Edessa would have given a stubborn and possibly a successful defence, for the terror of his name had long held the Moslems at bay. Once, while lying on what he thought to be his death-bed, this veteran heard that the enemy had laid siege to one of his strong towers, and commanded his son to go to its rescue. The younger Josselin delayed on account of the few troops he could take with him. Old Josselin ordered the soldiers to carry him to the front on his litter. The news of his approach was sufficient to cause the quick withdrawal of the Moslems; but an invincible foe was upon the warrior, for, with hand raised in gratitude to Heaven, he expired.

Josselin II. of Edessa was unworthy of such a sire. His weakness being known, he inspired neither terror in his foes nor respect among his own people. Zenghi surprised Edessa with a host of Kurds and Turkomans. To Oriental daring he added the careful engineering learned from his Western antagonists. Quickly the walls were surrounded by movable towers higher than the ramparts; battering-rams beat against the foundation, and storms of stones, javelins, and combustibles swept away the defenders. In vain the city held out for a while in expectancy of aid from Jerusalem. On the twenty-eighth day (December 14, 1144) it fell. The news spread a dismay which could have been surpassed only by the capture of Jerusalem itself.

The report of Zenghi’s death two years later gave to the Christians a ray of hope for at least fewer disasters. That hope was quickly extinguished by the exploits of Nourredin, his son, whose deeds stirred the prophetic spirit of Moslem imams to foretell the speedy fall of the Holy City. At the same time they excited the superstitious fears of the Christians, who saw in comets, as well as in the flash of Nourredin’s cimeters, the signs of Heaven’s displeasure, and interpreted the very thunders of the sky as the celestial echo of his tramping squadrons.

The tidings of the fall of Edessa was the immediate occasion of the second crusade.

Before considering this, let us note briefly the influence upon Europe of the first crusade and of the kingdom of Jerusalem which it had established.

CHAPTER XXII.
MILITARY ORDERS—HOSPITALLERS—TEMPLARS—TEUTONIC KNIGHTS.

One of the most significant fruits of the first crusade was the creation and growth of the military orders—the Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John, the Templars, and the Teutonic Knights.

The Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John.—This famous organization, which was for centuries a bulwark of Christendom and which still exists, originated earlier than the crusades, but first attained power and repute in those exciting days. In the year 1023 the Egyptian caliph, who held possession of Jerusalem, was induced by the entreaty of the merchants of Amalfi to allow them to found in the sacred city a hospital for the care of poor and sick Latin pilgrims. A building near the Holy Sepulchre was secured for the purpose and dedicated to the Virgin, with the title of “Santa Maria de Latina.” As the multitude of pilgrims and their needs increased, a more commodious hospitium was erected. This was named after the sainted Patriarch of Alexandria, John Eleemon (the Compassionate). St. John the Baptist seems, however, to have secured the honor of becoming the ultimate titular patron of this order of nurses and almoners. When Jerusalem fell into the possession of the crusaders in 1099, Gerard, the hospital Master, endeared himself and his little band of helpers to the multitude of wounded. Godfrey de Bouillon endowed them with the revenues of his estates in Brabant. His example was followed by others. Many with spirits chastened by their own sufferings gave themselves personally to the work of the Hospitallers. Gerard, the Master, organized the brethren into a religious order, exacting from them the triple vow of poverty, obedience, and chastity. Each member wore a black robe, and upon his breast an eight-pointed white cross. Anticipating our history, in 1113 the order was dignified by the special sanction of Pope Paschal II. Raymond du Puy, a noble knight of Dauphine, became Master in 1118, and enlarged the function of members by requiring of them, in addition to the triple vow, an oath of military service. The order was then divided into (1) knights, whose special work was in the camp and field; (2) clergy; (3) serving brethren, or hospital attendants. Later it was necessary to subdivide its numerous adherents into seven classes, according to the language they spoke. The order was a republic, whose officers were elected by the suffrage of all, but who, once installed, wielded an autocratic power. Its fame spread throughout all countries. Multitudes enlisted under its auspices for service in the Holy Land; it became possessed of enormous property throughout Europe; its agents were at all courts, and its Briarean hands were felt at every centre of power throughout Christendom.

The Templars.—In the year 1114, four years before the Hospitallers had enlarged their function to include military duties, a Burgundian knight, Hugh de Payen, and eight comrades bound themselves by oath to guard the public roads about Jerusalem, which were continually menaced by Moslems and freebooters. King Baldwin II. assigned these good men quarters on the temple site of Mount Moriah, whence their title, “Pauperes Commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici.” At first the Templars seem to have gloried in their poverty, as indicated by the original seal of the order, which represents two knights mounted on a single horse. Their members augmented until they shared with the Hospitallers the glory of being the chief defenders of the new kingdom of Jerusalem. Hugh de Payen was sent by Baldwin II. as one of his ambassadors to secure help from European powers. The Grand Master, appearing before the Council of Noyes, January, 1128, obtained for his order the formal approval of the church. He returned to Palestine with three hundred knights, representing the noblest families of Europe. Among them was Foulque of Anjou, afterwards the King of Jerusalem. Brotherhoods of Templars were founded in Spain by 1129, in France by 1131, and in Rome by 1138. The mantle of the Knight Templar was white with a plain red cross on the left breast. The clerical members wore black. Their banner bore the inscription, “Not unto us, O Lord, but unto Thy name be glory!”

The history of the Hospitallers and the Templars until the fall of the sacred city is that of the kingdom itself. In all battles these knights of the white and the red cross were conspicuous for bravery, and by the unity and discipline of their organizations gave steadiness to the progress of the cause, or at least retarded other disasters which finally befell it.

Teutonic Order.—The Order of Teutonic Knights of St. Mary’s Hospital at Jerusalem was founded in 1128. During its earlier history its members limited their endeavors to religious and charitable work. It was not until 1190, during a later crusade than that we have been narrating, that it acquired military organization. From that time, as a purely German order, it shared with the Hospitallers and Templars the charters bestowed by the Pope and emperors, and contested with them the palm of heroism and power. Its peculiar badge was a black cross on a white mantle.

CHAPTER XXIII.
EUROPE BETWEEN THE FIRST AND SECOND CRUSADES—KINGSHIP IN FRANCE—PAPAL AGGRANDIZEMENT—ABÉLARD—ARNOLD OF BRESCIA—BERNARD.

During the fifty years (1096-1146) which had elapsed since the exodus of the first crusaders a new generation had grown up in Europe. Vast changes had taken place everywhere, in every grade of society, in popular habits, and in conditions of thought. The crisis of the Dark Ages had passed; new light was breaking upon problems of government, the relation of classes, and even upon religious doctrine and discipline. These changes were largely due to the crusade itself and to the continuous intercourse between the East and the West which it inaugurated. The full development of these new sentiments and movements was due to the influence of subsequent crusades. We may, therefore, reserve their consideration until we shall have completed the story of these various expeditions, the tramp of which was yet to resound for a hundred and fifty years. Two results were, however, so intimately connected with the close of the first and the projection of the second crusade as to call for notice in passing. These were the strengthening of the kingship in France and the increased prestige of the Papacy.

The kingship in France during this period became consolidated and rapidly advanced. So many of the more potent and adventurous barons being engaged in foreign parts, the crown had little competition, and feudal privileges were steadily merged in the royal prerogatives. In the words of Michelet, “Ponderous feudalism had begun to move, and to uproot itself from the soil. It went and came, and lived upon the beaten highway of the crusade between France and Jerusalem.” France under Louis IV. (the Fat) (1108-37) became a nation, and was less jealous of restless chieftains at home than of the newly risen kingdom of the Normans in England, the long rivalry with which may be dated from this reign. When the German emperor, Henry V., in 1124 prepared to invade France, the counts of Flanders, Brittany, Aquitaine, and Anjou rallied against him under the lead of the French king, whose authority they had previously menaced.

The gathering of the forces of the Frankish peoples under a single sceptre marks a new era in the history of Europe. We shall observe especially its influence upon the organization of the coming crusades, whose leaders were no longer feudal chieftains, like Godfrey, Raymond, Bohemond, and Tancred, but royal personages supported by the compact power of the new nationality.

The chief advantage from the first crusade fell to the Papacy, which gathered to itself the prestige of the power it had evoked; and rightly, if great prevision ever merits the fruit of the policy it dares to inaugurate. Paschal II., who followed Urban II. in the papal chair (1099-1118), was too weak to uphold the daring projects of his predecessor; but Calixtus II. (1119-24) and Innocent II. (1130-43) showed the genuine Hildebrandian spirit. Although the Concordat of Worms (1123) modified somewhat the claims of the Papacy as against the German empire, the church steadily compacted its power about thrones and people.

The authority of the Papacy was especially augmented in this period by its temporary success against a movement whose ultimate triumph was destined to cost the Roman Church its dominance of Christendom, viz., the impulse towards liberal thought. The standard-bearer of this essential Protestantism was Abélard. This astute reasoner placed the human judgment, when guided by correct scholarship, above all traditional authority. The popularity of his teaching was a serious menace to the doctrines of the church, so far as these rested upon the dictation of the popes. The consternation of ecclesiastics was voiced by Bernard, the Abbot of Clairvaux, who declared in his appeal to Pope Innocent II.: “These books of Abélard are flying abroad over all the world; they no longer shun the light; they find their way into castles and cities; they pass from land to land, from one people to another. A new gospel is promulgated, a new faith is preached. Disputations are held on virtue and vice not according to Christian morality, on the sacraments of the church not according to the rule of faith, on the mystery of the Trinity not with simplicity and soberness. This huge Goliath, with his armor-bearer, Arnold of Brescia, defies the armies of the Lord to battle.”

The Goliath fell, but by no pebble from the sling of a David. Bernard was justly reputed the greatest mind of the age. He hesitated to enter into a learned controversy with Abélard, but smote him with a thunderbolt of excommunication, which he secured from the hands of the occupant of the Vatican throne.

Another movement against the papal power was even more threatening and, during the period we are describing, caused the throne of Peter to tremble. As Abélard assailed the current thought, so Arnold of Brescia proposed to revolutionize the secular power of the Papacy. He denied its right to temporal dominion in Italy, to dominate as it was doing the councils of other kingdoms, to interfere with judicial functions or to conduct military operations. He would sweep away all this outward estate as unbecoming the representative of Jesus of Nazareth. The clergy must be reduced to apostolic poverty; their glory should be only their good works; their maintenance the voluntary offerings, or at most the tithings, of the people. Even the empire of Germany and the French kingdom should be converted into republics.

Arnold’s views made rapid headway. Brescia declared itself a republic. The Swiss valleys were full of liberal sympathizers. A commonwealth sprang up in Rome, which announced to the Pope its recognition of only his spiritual headship. The people defeated and slew one Pope, who was clad in armor and marched at the head of his soldiers; another they expelled.

It was while the papal territory in Italy was thus occupied by the adherents of Arnold that the second crusade was inaugurated.

Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, was its chief inspirer, both in counsel with the leaders of Europe and with his voice as its popular herald. High above generals and scholars, beyond kings, emperors, and popes, this man stands in the gaze of history. His repute for wisdom and sanctity was extended by miracles accredited to his converse with Heaven. Believed to be above earthly ambition, he commanded and rebuked with a celestial authority. Papal electors came to consult the monk before they announced their judgment as to who should be Pope, and when on the throne the Pope consulted the monk before he ventured to set the seal of his infallibility to his own utterances. Bernard’s humility may have been great Godward, but it was not of the sort to lead him to decline the solemn sovereignty of men’s minds and wills. When Henry I. of England hesitated to acknowledge Innocent II., Bernard’s choice for Pope, on the ground that he was not the rightful occupant of the holy see, the monk exclaimed, “Answer thou for thy other sins; let this be on my head.” When Lothaire of Germany demanded of the Holy Father the renewal of the right of imperial investitures, the saint threw his spell about the emperor and left him submissive at the feet of the pontiff. When Louis VII. of France, in his rage against Thibaut, Count of Champagne, carried devastation through the count’s domains and burned the church of Vitry, with thirteen hundred of its citizens who had there taken refuge against his vengeance, Bernard openly rebuked the king, and with such effect that the monarch proposed, as a self-inflicted penance, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, there to wipe out his guilt in the blood of Moslems.

In this purpose of Louis VII. originated the second crusade.