foot. The example and footsteps of Peter were closely pursued by another fanatic, the monk Godescal, whose sermons had swept away fifteen or twenty thousand peasants from the villages of Germany. Their rear was again pressed by an herd of two hundred thousand, the most stupid and savage refuse of the people, who mingled with their devotion a brutal licence of rapine, prostitution, and drunkenness. Some counts and gentlemen, at the head of three thousand horse, attended the motions of the multitude to partake in the spoil: but their genuine leaders (may we credit such folly ?) were a goose and a goat, who were carried in the front, and to whom these worthy Christians ascribed an infusion of the divine spirit.35 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.36 At Verdun, Trèves, Mentz, Spires, Worms, many thousands 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.

37

35 Fuit et aliud scelus detestabile in hac congregatione pedestris populi stulti et vesanæ levitatis.... anserem quendam divino spiritû asserebant afflatum, et capellam non minus eodem repletam, et has sibi duces [hujus] secundæ viæ fecerant, &c. (Albert. Aquensis, 1. i. c. 31, p. 196). Had these peasants founded an empire, they might have introduced, as in Egypt, the worship of animals, which their philosophic descendants would have glossed over with some specious and subtle allegory.

36 Benjamin of Tudela describes the state of his Jewish brethren from Cologne along the Rhine: they were rich, generous, learned, hospitable, 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 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 [p. 328, ed. Bened.]) admonishes the Oriental Franks, non sunt persequendi Judæi, non sunt trucidandi. The contrary doctrine had been preached by a rival monk.

in Hungary

A.D. 1096.

Between the frontiers of Austria and the seat of the Byzantine monarchy the crusaders were compelled to traverse an in- Their terval of six hundred miles, the wild and desolate countries destruction of Hungary 38 and Bulgaria. The soil is fruitful, and inter- and Asia, 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 .mbibed 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 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.39 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 succour 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 bene

38 See the contemporary description of Hungary in Otho of Frisingen, 1. i. c. 31, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, toni. vi. p. 665, 666.

39 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; Tollen burg, 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 Pexejo and Walter the Penniless: they passed safe through Hungary, the kingdom of Calmany, and were attacked in Bulgaria. Peter followed with 40,000 men; passed through Hungary;

VOL. VII.

but, seeing the clothes of sixteen crusaders on the walls of Semlin, he attacked and stormed the city. He then marched to Nissa, where at first he was hospitably received; but an accidental quarrel taking place, he suffered a great defeat. Wilken, vol. i. p. 84-86.-M.

factor, 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, Water the Penniless, 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 40 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.11

The chiefs

crusade.

None of the great sovereigns of Europe embarked their persons in the first crusade. The emperor Henry the Fourth was not of the first 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, 42 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

40 Anna Comnena (Alexias, 1. x. p. 287) describes this or noλwvès as a mountain ψηλὸν καὶ βάθος καὶ πλάτος ἀξιολογώτατον. In the siege of Nice such were used by the Franks themselves as the materials 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 Cappadocia, but who still lives in the poem of Tasso (tom. iv. p. 111-115).

* Soliman had been killed in 1085, in a battle against Toutouch, brother of Malek Schah, between Aleppo and Antioch. It was not Soliman, therefore, but his son David, surnamed Kilidge-Arslan, the "Sword of the Lion," who reigned in Nice. A.most all the Occidental authors have fallen into this mistake, which was detected by M. Michaud, Hist. des Crois.

4th edit. [vol. i. p. 204], and Extraits des Aut. Arab. rel. aux Croisades, par M. Reinaud, Paris, 1829, p. 3. His kingdom extended from the Orontes to the Euphrates, and as far as the Bosphorus. Kilidge-Arslan must uniformly be substituted for Soliman. Brosset, note on Le Beau, tom. xv p. 311.—M.

The Crowd.

The
Chiefs.

The Road to
Constantinople.

Alexius.

Nice and Asia
Minor.

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

c. 7-11.

c. 11-20.

c. 11-20.

c. 21-25.

c. 26.

c. 27-38.

c. 39-52.

c. 45.

c. 54-77.

of Bouillon.

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 1. Godfrey 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 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 5 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 comII. Hugh of posed of fourscore thousand foot and about ten thousand Vermandois, horse. II. In the parliament that was held at Paris, in the Normandy 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

Robert of

Robert of Flanders, Stephen of

Chartres, &c.

43 The fragments of the kingdoms of Lotharingia, or Lorraine, were broken into tba 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. 243.288).

"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; Bouillon, p. 134. On his departure Godfrey sold or pawned Bouillon to the church for 1300 marks."

See the family character of Godfrey in William of Tyre, 1. ix. c. 5-8; his previous design in Guibert (p. 485 [l. ii. c. 12]); his sickness and vow in Bernard. Thesaur. (c. 78).

The sum is uncertain. Several authors make it much less. Michaud, vol. i. p 168.-S.