[198] It is commonly believed that this battle of Ascalon served Tasso as a model for the great battle which terminates the Jerusalem Delivered. It is easy to see that the poet had also in view the battle of Antioch, which was fought at the gates of the city, of which the Christians were the masters. Raymond could not be present, because he held the citadel of Antioch in check, still in the power of the enemy. These circumstances, and several others, are found equally in the battle of the Jerusalem Delivered and in the historians who have described the battle of Antioch.
[199] There is in the Arabian history of Jerusalem and Hebron, a quatrain addressed to the count of St. Gilles, upon the defeat of Afdhal-Ben-Bedr-al-Djémaly, general of the army of Egypt, before Ascalon:—
Tu as fait triompher par ton épée la religion du Messie,
Dieu nous preserve d’un homme tel que Saint Gilles!
Jamais les hommes n’avaient entendu rien de pareil à ce qu’il a fait;
Il a mis dans la plus honteuse fuite Afdhul.
We quote this quatrain less for any idea that it contains, than to show that Raymond enjoyed great fame among the Mussulmans.
[200] This emissary is called Bohemond by Raymond d’Agiles. It is believed that it was Phirous who gave up Antioch to the Christians, that had taken the name of Bohemond.
[201] For this quarrel between Godfrey and Raymond, see Albert d’Aix, lib. vi. cap. 41, 42, and 43.
[202] In the genealogical history of several houses of Brittany, is the following rather curious passage: “Rion de Loheac acquired in this voyage beautiful and rich spoils from the enemies of Christianity, the Saracens; and above all things he was curious to seek for and collect heaps of the sacred and precious relics which were in those regions, in the number of which was a part and portion of the true cross upon which our Saviour Jesus Christ suffered death for the salvation of the human race, and of the stone of the sepulchre in which the said Saviour was buried. These relics he intended to bring into his own country; but being prevented by a disease of which he died in the said country of Syria, he sent them to his brother Gauthier de Loheac, by his squire called Simon de Ludron, who had accompanied him in this voyage.” We might quote many other similar facts which prove that the Christians of the West set the greatest value upon relics brought from the East.
[203] This circumstance is related in the Chronicle of Hainault ’Gisleberti Chronica Hannoniæ:)—Tacendum non est, says this chronicle, quod uxor ejus Yda comitissa domini sui occasum ut audivit, sed incerta si occisus fuerit, vel captus teneretur, Deum et virum suum diligens, partes illas eum labore magno et gravibus expensis adire non dubitavit: unde ipsa priùs de viro suo incerta, incertior rediit.—P. 37.
[204] See the Life of Peter the Hermit, by le P. d’Oultremont. Peter the Hermit was returning from the Holy Land in 1102, with a nobleman of the country of Liége, named the count de Montaign, when he was assailed by a violent tempest, during which he made a vow to build an abbey. It was in performance of this vow that he founded the abbey of Neufmontier at Huy, in Le Condrez, on the right bank of the Meuse, in honour of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. Alexander, bishop of Liége, dedicated it in 1130. Peter died there at an advanced age, and desired, from humility, to be buried outside the church. It was not till a hundred and thirty years after his death that the abbot and the chapter caused his relics to be removed to a coffin covered with marble before the altar of the twelve apostles, in the year 1242, with a sufficiently long epitaph, which M. Morard, of the Academy of Sciences, read on passing through Huy in 1761, which is reported in the 3rd vol. of the MSS. of the Library of Lyon, by M. Delandine, p. 481.
[205] Robert, count of Flanders, was killed by a fall from his horse.