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416

DESTRUCTION OF THE FIRST CRUSADERS. [CH. LVIII.

of that unhappy people were pillaged and massacred;* nor had they felt a more bloody stroke since the persecution of Hadrian. A remnant was saved by the firmness of their bishops, who accepted a feigned and transient conversion; but the more obstinate Jews opposed their fanaticism to the fanaticism of the Christians, barricadoed their houses, and precipitating themselves, their families, and their wealth, into the rivers or the flames, disappointed the malice, or at least the avarice, of their implacable foes.

Between the frontiers of Austria and the seat of the Byzantine monarchy, the crusaders were compelled to traverse an interval of six hundred miles; the wild and desolate countries of Hungary† and Bulgaria. The soil is fruitful, and intersected with rivers; but it was then covered with morasses and forests, which spread to a boundless extent, whenever man has ceased to exercise his dominion over the earth. Both nations had imbibed the rudiments of Christianity; the Hungarians were ruled by their native princes; the Bulgarians by a lieutenant of the Greek emperor; but, on the slightest provocation, their ferocious nature was rekindled, and ample provocation was afforded by the disorders of the first pilgrims. Agriculture must have been unskilful and languid among a people, whose cities were built of reeds and timber, which were deserted in the summer season for the tents of hunters and shepherds. A scanty supply of provisions was rudely demanded, forcibly seized, and greedily consumed; and on the first quarrel, the crusaders gave a loose to indignation and revenge. But their ignorance of the country, of war, and of discipline, exposed them to every snare. The Greek prefect of Bulgaria commanded a regular force; at the trumpet of the Hungarian king, the eighth or the tenth of his martial subjects bent their bows and mounted on horseback; their policy was insidious, and their retaliation on these pious robbers was unrelenting and bloody. About a third of the naked fugi

massacres.

* These massacres and depredations on

the Jews, which were renewed at each crusade, are coolly related. It is true, that St. Bernard (epist. 363, tom. i. p. 329) admonishes the Oriental Franks, non sunt persequendi Judæi, non sunt trucidandi. The contrary doctrine had been preached by a rival monk.

+See the contemporary description of Hungary in Otho of Frisingen, 1 2, c. 31, in Muratori, Scrip. Rerum Italicarum, tom. vi. p. 665, 666. The old Hungarians, without excepting Turotzius, are ill-informed

tives, and the hermit Peter was of the number, escaped to the Thracian mountains; and the emperor, who respected the pilgrimage and succour of the Latins, conducted then. by secure and easy journeys to Constantinople, and advised them to await the arrival of their brethren. For awhile they remembered their faults and losses; but no sooner were they revived by the hospitable entertainment, than their venom was again inflamed; they stung their benefactor, and neither gardens, nor palaces, nor churches, were safe from their depredations. For his own safety, Alexius allured them to pass over to the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus ; but their blind impetuosity soon urged them to desert the station which he had assigned, and to rush headlong against the Turks who occupied the road of Jerusalem. The hermit, conscious of his shame, had withdrawn from the camp to Constantinople; and his lieutenant, Walter the Pennyless, who was worthy of a better command, attempted without success to introduce some order and prudence among the herd of savages. They separated in quest of prey, and themselves fell an easy prey to the arts of the sultan. By a rumour that their foremost companions were rioting in the spoils of his capital, Soliman tempted the main body to descend into the plain of Nice; they were overwhelmed by the Turkish arrows; and a pyramid of bones* informed their

of the first crusade, which they involve in a single passage. Katona, -like ourselves, can only quote the writers of France; but he compares, with local science, the ancient and modern geography. Ante portam Cyperon, is Sopron or Poson; Malevilla, Zemlin; Fluvius Maroe, Savus; Lintax, the Laytha; Mesebroch, or Merseburg, Ouar or Moson; Tollenburg, Praag (de Regibus, Hungariæ, tom. iii. p. 19-53).

* Anna Comnena (Alexias, 1. 10, p. 287), describes this oorv κολωνός as a mountain ὑψηλὸν καὶ βάθος καὶ πλάτος ἀξιολογώτατον. In the siege of Nice, such were used by the Franks themselves as the materials of a wall. [These were the survivors of the two first divisions. But the sultan, by whom they were destroyed, was not Soliman. He had fallen in battle eleven years before, and had been succeeded by his son, Kilidsch Arslan. (Wilken, i. p. 90. 139, and Appendix 8.) The four bodies of crusaders, whose deplorable adventures we have been perusing, comprised 273,000 men, of whom few, except Peter the Hermit, lived to join the martial bands that followed. Is it possible that those who gave the first impulse to the movement, did not foresee the inevitable doom of this promiscuous and infatuated rabble? To suppose them blind to the consequences, is to deny them common sense. They could, too, have stopped the impetuous current; but they let it take its course. Is it malignant or unjust to accuse VOL VI. 2 E

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418

CHIEFS OF THE FIRST CRUSADE.

[CH. LVIII. companions of the place of their defeat. Of the first crusaders, three hundred thousand had already perished, before a single city was rescued from the infidels, before their graver and more noble brethren had completed the preparations of their enterprise.*

None of the great sovereigns of Europe embarked their persons in the first crusade. The emperor Henry the Fourth was not disposed to obey the summons of the pope; Philip the First of France was occupied by his pleasures; William Rufus of England by a recent conquest; the kings of Spain were engaged in a domestic war against the Moors; and the northern monarchs of Scotland, Denmark,† Sweden, and Poland, were yet strangers to the passions and interests of the south. The religious ardour was more strongly felt by the princes of the second order, who held an important place in the feudal system. Their situation will naturally cast under four distinct heads the review of their names and characters; but I may escape some needless repetition, by observing at once, that courage and the exercise of arms are the common attribute of these Christian adventurers.-I. The first rank both in war and council is justly due to Godfrey of Bouillon; and happy would it have been for the crusaders, if they had trusted themselves to the sole conduct of that accomplished hero, a worthy representative of Charlemagne, from whom he was descended in the female line. His father was of the noble race of the counts of Boulogne: Brabant, the lower province of Lorraine, was the inheritance of his mother; and by the

them of thus rolling away into the jaws of perdition the living materials out of which armies might have been formed, or industrious artisans trained, to obstruct the pontifical road to greatness? Wilken (p. 101) reckons the slain to have been half a million; but his own numbers do not bear out such a computation.-ED.]

* For note, see following page.

The author of the Esprit des Croisades has doubted, and might have disbelieved, the crusade and tragic death of prince Sueno, with fifteen hundred or fifteen thousand Danes, who was cut off by sultan Soliman in Cappadocia, but who still lives in the poem of Tasso (tom. iv. p. 111-115).

The fragments of the kingdoms of Lotharingia, or Lorraine, were broken into the two duchies of the Moselle, and of the Meuse: the first has preserved its name, which in the latter has been changed into that of Brabant. (Vales. Notit. Gall. p. 283—288.)

*To save time and space, I shall represent, in a short table, the particular references to the great events of the first crusade.

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420

GODFREY OF BOUILLON.

[CH. LVIII. emperor's bounty, he was himself invested with that ducal title, which has been improperly transferred to his lordship of Bouillon in the Ardennes.* In the service of Henry the Fourth, he bore the great standard of the empire, and pierced with his lance the breast of Rodolph the rebel king; Godfrey was the first who ascended the walls of Rome; and his sickness, his vow, perhaps his remorse for bearing arms against the pope, confirmed an early resolution of visiting the holy sepulchre, not as a pilgrim, but a deliverer. His valour was matured by prudence and moderation; his piety, though blind, was sincere; and, in the tumult of a camp, he practised the real and fictitious virtues of a convent. Superior to the private factions of the chiefs, he reserved his enmity for the enemies of Christ; and though he gained a kingdom by the attempt, his pure and disinterested zeal was acknowledged by his rivals. Godfrey of Bouillon † was accompanied by his two brothers, by Eustace the elder, who had succeeded to the county of Boulogne, and by the younger, Baldwin, a character of more ambiguous virtue. The duke of Lorraine was alike celebrated on either side of the Rhine; from his birth and education he was equally conversant with the French and Teutonic languages; the barons of France, Germany, and Lorraine, assembled their vassals; and the confederate force that marched under his banner was composed of fourscore thousand foot, and about ten thousand horse. II. In the parliament that was held at Paris, in the king's presence, about two months after the council of Clermont, Hugh count of Vermandois was the most conspicuous of the princes who assumed the cross. But the appellation of

* See, in the description of France, by the Abbé de Longuerue, the articles of Boulogne, part 1, p. 54. Brabant, part 2, p. 47, 48. Bouillon, p. 134. On his departure, Godfrey sold or pawned Bouillon to the church for thirteen hundred marks.

See the family character of Godfrey, in William of Tyre, l. 9, c. 5 -8: his previous design in Guibert (p. 485), his sickness and vow, in Bernard, Thesaur. (c. 78). [From these writers, together with the Chronicles of Albericus and Lambertus Schafnaburgensis de Rebus Gestis Germanorum, Wilken has collected more particulars respecting Godfrey, and anecdotes which prove his intrepid courage, his skill in the use of arms, his high sense of honour, and the estimation in which he was held by his contemporaries (i. p. 66-70). He appears to have been the most sincere of all the crusaders.-ED.]

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