LVIII.

brutal licence of rapine, proftitution, and drunkennefs. CHA P. Some counts and gentlemen, at the head of three thoufand horse, attended the motions of the multitude to partake in the spoil; but their genuine leaders (may we credit fuch folly?) were a goose and a goat, who were carried in the front, and to whom thefe worthy Christians afcribed an infusion of the divine spirit (35). Of these, and of other bands of enthufiafts, the first and most easy warfare was against the Jews, the murderers of the Son of God. In the trading cities of the Mofelle and the Rhine, their colonies were numerous and rich; and they enjoyed, under the protection of the emperor and the bishops, the free exercise of their religion (36). At Verdun, Treves, Mentz, Spires, Worms, many thousands of that unhappy people were pillaged and massacred (37): nor had they felt a more bloody ftroke fince the perfecution of Hadrian. A remnant was faved by the firmness of their bishops, who accepted a feigned and tranfient conversion; but the more obftinate Jews oppofed their fanaticifm to the fanaticism of the Chriftians, barricadoed their houses, and precipitating themselves, their families, and their wealth, into the rivers or the flames, difappointed the malice, or at least the avarice, of their implacable foes.

Hungary

Between the frontiers of Auftria and the feat of the Their deByzantine monarchy, the crufaders were compelled to tra- ftruction in verfe an interval of fix hundred miles; the wild and defo- and Afia, late countries of Hungary (38) and Bulgaria. The foil is A. D. 1096. VOL. VI. fruitful,

(35) Fuit et aliud fcelus deteftabile in hac congregatione pedeftris populi ftulti et vefanæ levitatis, anjeren quendam divino fpiritû afferebant afflatum, et capellam non minus codem repletam, et has fibi duces fecundæ viæ, &c. (Albert. Aquenfis, 1. i. c. 31. p. 196.). Had thefe peasants founded an empire, they might have introduced, as in Egypt, the worship of animals, which their philofophic defcendants would have gloffed over with fome fpecious and fubtle allegory.

(36) Benjamin of Tudela defcribes the ftate of his Jewish brethren from Cologne along the Rhine: they were rich, generous, learned, hospitable, and lived in the eager hope of the Meffiah (Voyage, tom. i. p. 243 245. par Baratier). In feventy years (he wrote about A. D. 1170) they had recovered from thefe maflacres.

(37) These maffacres and depredations on the Jews, which were renew ed at each crufade, are coolly related. It is true, that St. Bernard (epift. 363. tom. i. p. 329.) admonishes the Oriental Franks, non funt perfequendi Judæi, non funt trucidandi. The contrary doctrine had been preached by a rival monk.

(38) See the contemporary defcription of Hungary in Otho of Frifingen, 1. ii. c. 31. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. vi. p. 665, 666.

LVIII.

CHA P. fruitful, and interfected with rivers; but it was then covered with moraffes and forefts, which fpread to a boundless extent, whenever man has ceafed to exercife 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 flighteft provocation, their ferocious nature was rekindled, and ample provocation was afforded by the diforders of the first pilgrims. Agriculture must have been unfkilful and languid among a people, whofe cities were built of reeds and timber, which were deferted in the fummer feafon for the tents of hunters and fhepherds. A fcanty supply of provifions was rudely demanded, forcibly feized, and greedily confumed; and on the first quarrel, the crufaders gave a loose to indignation and revenge. But their ignorance of the country, of war, and of difcipline, expofed them to every fnare. The Greek præfect of Bulgaria commanded a regular force: at the trumpet of the Hungarian king, the eighth or the tenth of his martial fubjects bent their bows and mounted on horfeback; their policy was infidious, and their retaliation, on thefe pious robbers was unrelenting and bloody (39). About a third of the naked fugitives, and the hermit Peter was of the number, efcaped to the Thracian mountains; and the emperor, who refpected the pilgrimage and fuccour of the Latins, conducted them by fecure and easy journies to Conftantinople, and advised them to await the arrival of their brethren. For a while they remembered their faults and loffes; but no fooner were they revived by the hofpitable entertainment, than their venom was again inflamed; they stung their benefactor, and neither gardens, nor palaces, nor churches, were fafe from their depredations. For his own fafety, Alexius allured them to pafs over to the Afiatic fide of the Bofphorus; but their blind impetuofity foon urged them to defert the ftation which. he had affigned, and to rufh headlong against the Turks,

who

(39) The old Hungarians, without excepting Turotzius, are ill informed of the first crufade, which they involve in a single paffage. Katona, like ourfelves, can only quote the writers of France; but he compares with local science the ancient and modern geography. Ante portam Cypern, is Sopron or Pofon; Mallevilla, Zemlin; Fluvius M, Savus; Lintax, Leith; Mefebroch, or Merseburg, Ouar, or Mofon; Tollenburg, Fragg (de Regibus Hungariæ, tom. iii. p. 19-53-).

L.VIII.

who occupied the road of Jerufalem. The hermit, confci- CHAP. ous of his fhame, had withdrawn from the camp to Conftantinople; and his lieutenant, Walter the Pennylefs, who was worthy of a better command, attempted without fuccefs to introduce some order and prudence among the herd of favages. They feparated in queft of prey, and themselves fell an eafy prey to the arts of the fultan. By a rumour that their foremost companions were rioting in the spoils of his capital, Soliman tempted the main body to defcend into the plain of Nice; they were overwhelmed by the Turkish arrows; and a pyramid of bones (40) informed their companions of the place of their defeat. Of the firft crufaders, three hundred thousand had already perifhed, before a fingle city was refcued from the infidels, before their graver and more noble brethren had completed the preparations of their enterprise (41). C 2

~

None

(40) Anna Comnena (Alexias, 1. x. p. 287.) describes this οταν πολωνος as a mountain υψηλον και βαθος και πλατος αξιολογωτατον. In the fiege of Nice, fuch were used by the Franks themselves as the materials of a wall.

(41) To fave time and space, I fhall reprefent, in a fhort table, the particular references to the great events of the first crusade.

1. Gefta

LVII.

None of the great fovereigns of Europe embarked their CHA P. perfons in the firft crufade. The emperor Henry the fourth was not difpofed to obey the fummons of the pope: The Chiefs Philip the first of France was occupied by his pleasures; of the first William Rufus of England by a recent conqueft; the kings crufade. of Spain were engaged in a domestic war against the Moors; and the northern monarchs of Scotland, Denmark (42), Sweden and Poland, were yet strangers to the paffions and interefts of the South. The religious ardour was more ftrongly felt by the princes of the fecond order, who held an important place in the feudal fyftem. Their fituation will naturally caft under four diftinét heads the review of their names and characters; but I may efcape fome needless repetition, by obferving at once, that courage and the exercise of arms are the common attribute of these Chrif

tian adventurers. I. The first rank both in war and coun- 1. Godfrey cil is justly due to Godfrey of Bouillon; and happy would of Bouillon. it have been for the crufaders, if they had trusted themfelves to the fole conduct of that accomplished hero, a worthy reprefentative of Charlemagne, from whom he was defcended in the female line. His father was of the noble race of the counts of Boulogne: Brabant, the lower province of Lorraine (43), was the inheritance of his mother; and by the emperor's bounty, he was himself invefted with that ducal title, which has been improperly transferred to his lordship of Bouillon in the Ardennes (44). In the fervice of Henry the fourth, he bore the great standard of the empire, and pierced with his lance the breaft of Rodolph, the rebel king: Godfrey was the first who afcended the walls of Rome; and his fickness, his vow, perhaps his remorfe for bearing arms against the pope, confirmed an early refolution of vifiting the holy fepulchre, not as a pilgrim, but a deliverer. His valour was matured

by

(42) The Author of the Efprit des Croifades has doubted, and might have difbelieved, the crufade and tragic death of prince Sueno, with 1500. or 15,000 Danes, who was cut off by Sultan Soliman in Cappadocia, but who ftill lives in the poem of Taffo (tom. iv. p. 111-115.),

(43) The fragments of the kingdoms of Lotharingia, or Lorraine, were. broken into the two duchies, of the Mofelle, and of the Meufe; the first has preferved its name, which in the latter has been changed into that of Brabant (Valef. Notit. Gall. p. 283-288).

(44) See, in the Defcription of France, by the Abbé de Longuerue, the. articles of Boulogne, part i. p. 54. Brabant, part ii. p. 47, 48. Bouillon, p. 134. On his departure, Godfrey fold or pawned Bouillon to the church for 1300 marks.