ST. BERNARD FEEDING THE POOR
Manuel, the grandson of Alexius, was on the throne, and although like his ancestor he beheld with secret dread the armaments of Europe, yet for the protection of his subjects he entered into a treaty with Conrad for the regular purchase and sale of provisions. There was frequent matter of charge and recrimination between the Greeks and the Germans in the march of the latter to Constantinople; and circumstances occasioned many negotiations between the two emperors. But Conrad apprehended the duplicity of Manuel, and in indignation at the Grecian’s infraction of the treaty relating to intercourse, he crossed the Bosporus without meeting or conferring with the emperor.
Manuel received the king of France as an equal. He met him in the court of his palace, and after mutual embraces conducted him into an apartment, where they sat with equal dignity. In the midst of feasts and public rejoicings the French monarch learned that the emperor and the sultan of Iconium were in correspondence. The impatience of the barons and knights to visit Jerusalem overcame every suggestion to revenge, and made them think that the defence of the Holy Land, and not the destruction of the Greek Empire, was the object for which they had taken up arms. But there were not wanting men who urged that the time was arrived for removing the barrier between Europe and Asia.
DISASTERS OF THE GERMANS
The passage through Bithynia completed, Conrad entered Lycaonia, the heart of the dominions of the Seljuk Turks. The sultan had assembled from every quarter of his states all the troops that could possibly be brought into the field, and the number was so great that the rivers could not satisfy their thirst or the country furnish provisions. The imperial guides conducted the objects of their care either through deserts where the soldiers perished from hunger, or led them into the jaws of the Moslems. In their occasional transactions, the bread which the crusaders purchased was mixed with chalk, and various other cruel frauds were practised by the Greeks. The assaults of the Turks were incessant. The staff of the pilgrim was a poor defence from a scimitar, and the heavily armed Germans could not retreat from the activity of the Tatars. Only a tenth part of the soldiers and palmers that had left the banks of the Danube and the Rhine escaped the arrows of the Moslems, and with their commander secured their retreat to the French army. Louis had been lulled into security by the flattering assurances of Manuel that Conrad, so far from standing in need of succour, had even defeated the Turks and taken Iconium. The French king was lying in camp on the borders of the lake near Nicæa, when some wretched German fugitives arrived with news of the perfidy of the Greeks, and the triumph of the Moslems. The allied monarchs soon met and consulted on the road which the champions of the cross should take. They united their crusaders, turned aside from the path which had been trodden by the feudal princes of Europe, and marched in concert as far as Philadelphia in Lydia; but the Germans had lost their baggage, and on a prospect of new calamities, many returned to Constantinople, and near Ephesus (to which place the army directed its course) the emperor himself embarked, and went to Jerusalem by ship.
THE FRENCH FAILURE
Dubbing a Knight on the Field of Battle
The French recruited themselves on the shores of the Ægean Sea, and pursued their march in an easterly direction. They rejected with disdain an offer of Manuel of a protection from Moslem fury, and they gallantly kept up their course with the usual portion of suffering, till they arrived at the banks of the Mæander. They found there the Turks, who having safely deposited their spoils came to dispute with the Latins the passage of the river. The battle was not of long duration; the French made so great a slaughter of their foe, that the bones of the Moslems were conspicuous for years. The crusaders proceeded in good order and discipline through the town of Laodicea, into the barrier mountains between Phrygia and Pisidia. The vanguard of the army advanced beyond the appointed rendezvous. The rearguard, in which was the king, moved forwards with perfect confidence that the heights before them were in possession of their friends. Their ravenous enemy, who always hovered round them, seized the moment when the ranks of the Christians were divided, and casting aside their bows and arrows, fell upon them with tumultuous rapidity, sword in hand. It was in a defile of the mountains that the Turkish tempest burst on the Latin troops. Rocks ascending to the clouds were above the crusaders, and fathomless precipices beneath them. The French could not recover from the shock and horror of the surprise. Men, horses, and baggage were cast into the abyss. The Turks were innumerable and irresistible. The life of the king was saved more by fortune than by skill. He escaped to an eminence with a few soldiers, and in the deep obscurity of the night made his way to the advanced guard. The snows of winter, deficiency of stores, and the refusal of the Greeks to trade with them, were the evils with which the French had to contend. They marched, or rather wandered, for they knew not the roads, and the discipline of the army was broken. They arrived at Attalia (Adalia), the metropolis of Pamphylia, seated on the sea shore near the mouth of the Cestrus. But the unchristian Greeks refused hospitality to the enemies of the infidel name.