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Of these, and of other bands of enthusiasts, the first and most easy warfare was against the Jews, the murderers of the Son of God. In the trading cities of the Moselle 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. At Verdun, Treves, Mentz, Spires, Worms, many thousands of that unhappy people were pillaged and massacred: 37 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.

38

Between the frontiers of Austria and the seat of the Byzan tine monarchy, the crusaders were compelled to traverse a interval of six hundred miles; the wild and desolate countries of Hungary and Bulgaria. The soil is fruitful, and inter sected 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

36 Benjamin of Tudela describes the state of his Jewish brethren from Cologne along the Rhine: they were rich, generous, learned, hos pitable, and lived in the eager hope of the Messiah, (Voyage, tom. i. p 243-245, par Baratier.) In seventy years (he wrote about A. D 1170) they had recovered from these massacres.

37

97 These massacres and depredations on the Jews, which were re newed 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.*

8 See the contemporary description of Hungary in Otho of Frisin gen, 1. ii. c. 31, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. vi. p. 665

666.

This is an unjust sarcasm against St. Bernard. He stood above al rivalry of this kind See note 31, c. x.-M

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 præfect 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 fugitives (and the hermit Peter was of the number) escaped to the Thracian mountains; and the emperor, who respected the pilgrimage and succor of the Latins, conducted them by secure and easy journeys to Constantinople, and advised them to await the arrival of their brethren. For a while 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 to Jerusalem. The hermit, conscious of his shame, had withdrawn from the camp to Constantinople; and his lieutenant, Walter the Penniless, who was

99 The old Hungarians, without excepting Turotzius, are ill informed 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; Mallevilla, Zemlin; Fluvius Maroe, Savus; Lintax, Leith; Mesebroch, or Merseburg, Ouar, or Moson; Tollenburg, Pragg, (de Regibus Hungariæ, tom. iii. p. 19–53.)

* The narrative of the first march is very incorrect. The first party moved under Walter de Pexego and Walter the Penniless: they passed safe through Hungary, the kingdom of Kalmeny, and were attacked in Bulgaria. Peter followed with 40,000 men; passed through Hungary; but seeing the clothes of sixteen crusaders, who had been empaled on the walls of Semlin. he attacked and stormed the city. He then marched t Nissa, where, at first, he was hospitably received: but an accidental quar rel taking place, he suffered a great defeat. Wilken, vol. i p. 84-8 M.

worthy of a better command, attempted without success t introduce some order and prudence among the herd of sav ages. They separated in quest of prey, and themselves fell an easy prey to the arts of the sultan. By a rumor 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 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 ardor 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

40 Anna Comnena (Alexias, 1. x. p. 287) describes this dorov Koλwvos as a mountain, ὑψηλὸν καὶ βάθος καὶ πλάτος ἀξιολογώτατον. In the siege of Nice, such were used by the Franks themselves as the mate. rials of a wall.

41 See table on following page.

42 The author of the Esprit des Croisades has doubted, and might have disbelieved, the crusade and tragic death of Prince Sueno, with 1500 or 15,000 Danes, who was cut off by Sultan Soliman in Cappado cia, but who still lives in the poem of Tasso, (tom. iv. p. 111-115.)

"Soliman had been killed in 1085, in a battle against Toutoneh, brother of Malek Schah, between Appelo and Antioch. It was not Soliman, therefore, but his son David, surnamed Kilidje Arslan, the "Sword of the Lior.," who reigned in Nice. Almost all the occidental authors have fallen into this mistake, which was detected by M. Michaud, Hist. des Crois 4th edit. ard Extraits des Aut. Arab. rel. aux Croisades. par M. Reinaud Paris, 1829, p. 3 His kingdom extended from the Orontes to the Euphra les, and as far as the Bosphorus. Kilidje Arslan must uniformly be sub stituted for Soliman Brosset note on Beau. tom. xv. p. 311.-M.

2

The
Crowd.

The The Road to
Chiefs. Constantinople.

Alexius

Nice and Asia
Minor.

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

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

p. 2, 3.

p. 4, 5.

p. 5-7.

p. 9-15.

p. 15-22.

p. 18-20.

p. 20-29.

p. 33, 34. p. 35, 36. p. 36, 37.

p. 37, 38. p. 39-45.

-

p. 45-55.

p. 56-66.

p. 61, 62.

p. 74-81.

p. 89.

-

p. 91-93.

p. 91-94.

p. 94-101.

p. 101, 111. p. 111-122.

p. 116-119. p. 130-138.

[blocks in formation]

498,
p. 485, 489. p. 485-490.493,493. p. 496, 497.06, 512. p. 512-523.
(l. ii. c. 1-)

P. 520.
530, 533.

p. 523-537.

1. iv. 9-

1. iv. c. 1-6.

S

24. 1. v. 11. vi. c. 1-23. 1. vi. c. 14.
-23.

1. vii. c. 1
25.l.viii.
(c. 1-24.

-

c. 1-3, 15. c. 4-7, 17.

c. 8-13,
18, 19.

}

0. 14-16, }

-

c. 48-71.

c. 72-91.

c. 100-109.

c. 111-138.

c. 7-11.

-

c. 11-20.

c. 11-20.

c. 21-25.

c. 26.

c. 27-38.

c. 39-52.

c. 45.

54-77

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,43 was the inheritance of his mother; and by the emperor's bounty he was himself invest ed 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 walis 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 valor 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 " accompanied by his two brothers, by Eustace the elder, who had succeeded to the county of Boulogne, and by the young. er, Baldwin, a character of more ambiguous virtue. 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

45

was

The

49 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 intc that of Brabant, (Vales. Notit. Gall. p. 283-288.)

44 See, in the Description of France, by the Abbé de Longuerue, the articles of Boulogne, part i. p. 54; Brabant. part ii. p. 47, 48 Billon, p. 134. On his departure, Godfrey sold or pawned Bouillon

the church for 1300 marks.

* See the family character of Godfrey, in William of Tyre, l. ix. c 5 -8; his previous design in Guibert, (p. 485;) his sickness and vow in Bernard. Thesaur., (c 78.)

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