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.