“O misfortune! if tears take the place of true arms, when the fires of war break forth!
“How can the eye close its lids, when catastrophes such as ours would awaken even those who slept in the most profound repose!
“Your brethren have no other resting-places in Syria but the backs of their camels and the entrails of vultures!
“The Franks treat them like vile slaves, whilst you allow yourselves to be drawn carelessly along by the skirt of the robe of effeminacy, as people would do in perfect security!
“What blood has not flowed! how many women have been forced by modesty to conceal their beauty with their bracelets!
“Will the chiefs of the Arabs, the heroes of the Persians, submit to such degradation?
“Ah! at least, if they do not defend themselves, from attachment to their religion, let them be animated on account of their own honour, and by the love of all that is dear to them!”
[195] Eos tanquam segetem in transverso gladii secabant.—Bald. lib. iv.
[196] Subito sagittâ transfigebant, et quasi aves volatili telo percussas, ab ipsis arborum ramis moribundos humi procumbere cogebant.—Alb. Aq. lib. v. cap. 49.
[197] Anna Comnena, who speaks of the battle of Ascalon, says that the Franks were at first conquerors, and that they were afterwards attacked and beaten near Ramla. She mentions Baldwin, who was not then in Palestine, and did not come thither till after the death of Godfrey. It is easy to see that she confounds, as often happens with her, two different periods, that of the battle of Ascalon and that of the battle of Ramla, which was fought three years after, in the reign of Baldwin I.