.

}

LVIII.

CHAP, Treves, Mentz, Spires, Worms, many thousands of that unhappy people were pillaged and maffacred": nor had they felt a more bloody stroke fince the perfecution of Hadrian. A remnant was faved by the firmness of their bishops, who accepted a feigned and tranfient converfion; but the more obftinate Jews oppofed 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, difappointed the malice, or at least the avarice, of their implacable foes.

Their de#truction

in Hun

Afia,

A. D.
1096.

Between the frontiers of Auftria and the feat of the Byzantine monarchy, the crufaders were gary and compelled to traverse an interval of fix hundred miles; the wild and defolate countries of Hungary 38 and Bulgaria. The foil is fruitful, and interfected with rivers; but it was then covered with moraffes and forefts, which fpread to a boundless extent, whenever man has ceased to exercise his dominion over the earth. Both nations had imbibed the rudiments of Chriftianity; the Hungarians were ruled by their native princes;

from Cologne along the Rhine: they were rich, generous, learned, hofpitable, 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 these massacres.

37 Thefe maffacres and depredations on the Jews, which were renewed at each crusade, 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, om. vi. p. 665, 666.

LVIII.

the Bulgarians by a lieutenant of the Greek em- CHAP. peror; 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 provisions was rudely demanded, forcibly seized, 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 horseback; their policy was infidious, 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 refpected the pilgrimage and fuccour of the Latins, conducted them by fecure and eafy journies to Conftantinople, and advised them to await the arrival of

39 The old Hungarians, without excepting Turotzius, are ill informed of the first crufade, which they involve in a fingle paffage. Katona, like ourselves, can only quote the writers of France ; but he compares with local fcience the ancient and modern geography. Ante portam Cyperon, is Sopron, or Pofon; Mallevilla, Zemlin; Fluvius Maroe, Savus; Lintax, Leith; Mesebroch, or Merseburg, Ouar, or Mofon; Tollenburg, Pragg (de Regibus Hunga riæ, tom. iii. p. 19–53).

CHAP. their brethren. For a while they remembered: LVIII. their faults and loffes; but no fooner were they

revived by the hofpitable, entertainment, than their venom was again inflamed; they ftung 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 station which he had affigned, and to rush headlong against the Turks, who occupied the road of Jerufalem. The hermit, confcious of his shame, had withdrawn from the camp to Constantinople; and his lieutenant, Walter the Pennylefs, who was worthy of a better command, attempted without fuccefs to introduce fome order and prudence among the herd of favages. They separated 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" informed their companions of the place of their defeat. Of the first crufaders, three hundred thousand had already perished, before a fingle city was refcued from the infidels, before their graver and more noble brethren had completed the preparations of their enterprise **.

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

Sp.

CHAP.
LVIII.

The hiefs

crufade.

None of the great fovereigns of Europe embarked their perfons in the first crufade. The emperor Henry the fourth was not difpofed to obey the fummons of the pope: Philip the first of France was occupied by his pleafures; William Rufus of England by a recent conqueft; the kings of Spain. were engaged in a domeftic 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 strongly felt by the princes of the fecond order, who held an important place in the feudal fyftem. Their fituation will naturally caft under four diftinct heads the review of their names and characters; but I may escape fome needlefs repetition, by obferving at once, that courage and the exercife of arms are the common attribute of thefe Chriftian adventurers. I. Godfrey I. The firft rank both in war and council is of Bou

illon.

justly due to Godfrey of Bouillon; and happy would it have been for the crufaders, if they had trufted themselves 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

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 15000 Danes, who was cut off by fultan So. liman 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 (Vales. Notit. Gall. p. 283288.).

mother;