1

CHAP. the Low Countries, the banks of the Rhine, and LVIII. Apulia, fent a powerful reinforcement: fome bands of adventurers were drawn from Spain, Lombardy, and England"; and from the diftant bogs and mountains of Ireland or Scotland 78. iffued fome naked and favage fanatics, ferocious at home but unwarlike abroad. Had not fuperftition condemned the facrilegious prudence of depriving the poorest or weakest Chriftian of the merit of the pilgrimage, the useless crowd, with mouths but without hands, might have been stationed in the Greek empire, till their companions had opened and fecured the way of the Lord. A small remnant of the pilgrims, who paffed the Bofphorus, was permitted to vifit the holy fepulchre. Their northern conftitution was scorched by the rays, and infected by the vapors, of a Syrian fun. They confumed, with heedlefs prodigality, their ftores of water and provifion their numbers exhaufted the inland country; the fea was remote, the Greeks were

77 William of Malmbury (who wrote about the year 1130) has inferted in his history (1. iv. p. 130—154.) a narrative of the first crufade: but I wish that, inftead of liftening to the tenue murmur which had paffed the British ocean (p. 143.), he had confined himself to the numbers, families, and adventures of his countrymen. I find in Dugdale, that an English Norman, Stephen earl of Albemarle and Holderneffe, led the rear-guard with duke Robert, at the battle of Antioch (Baronage, parti. p.61.).

78 Videres Scotorum apud fe ferocium alias imbellium cuneos (Guibert, p. 471.): the crus intectum, and bifpida chlamys, may fuit the Highlanders; but the finibus uliginofis, may rather apply to the Irish bogs. William of Malmbury exprefsly mentions the Welsh and Scots, &c. (1. iv. p. 133.) who quitted, the former venationem faltuum, the latter familiaritatem pulicum.

un

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unfriendly, and the Chriftians of every fect fled CHA P. before the voracious and cruel rapine of their brethren. In the dire neceffity of famine, they fometimes roafted and devoured the flesh of their infant or adult captives. Among the Turks, and Saracens, the idolators of Europe were rendered more odious by the name and reputation of cannibals the spies who introduced themselves into the kitchen of Bohemond, were fhewn feveral human bodies turning on the fpit; and the artful Norman encouraged a report, which encreased at the fame time the abhorrence and the terror of the infidels ".

Siege of

A. D.

1097,

May 14

June 20.

I have expatiated with pleasure on the first steps of the crufaders, as they paint the manners Nice, and character of Europe: but I fhall abridge the tedious and uniform narrative of their blind atchievements, which were performed by strength and are described by ignorance. From their first station in the neighbourhood of Nicomedia, they advanced in fucceffive divifions; paffed the contracted limit of the Greek empire; opened a road through the hills, and commenced, by the fiege of his capital, their pious warfare against the Turkish fultan. His kingdom of Roum extended from the Hellefpont to the confines of Syria, and barred the pilgrimage of Jerufa

79 This cannibal hunger, fometimes real, more frequently an artifice or a lie, may be found in Anna Comnena (Alexias, 1. x. p. 288.), Guibert (p. 546.), Radulph. Cadom. (c. 97.). The stratagem is related by the author of the Gefta Francorum, the monk Robert Baldric, and Raymond des Agiles, in the fiege and famine of Antioch,

lem:

LVIII.

४० >

CHAP, lem: his name was Kilidge-Arffan, or Soliman of the race of Seljuk, and fon of the firft conqueror; and in the defence of a land which the Turks confidered as their own, he deferved the praise of his enemies, by whom alone he is known to pofterity. Yielding to the first impulfe of the torrent, he depofited his family and treafure in Nice; retired to the mountains with fifty thoufand horfe; and twice defcended to affault the camps or quarters of the Chriftian befiegers, which formed an imperfect circle of above fix miles. The lofty and folid walls of Nice were covered by a deep ditch, and flanked by three hundred and feventy towers; and on the verge of Christendom, the Moflems were trained in arms and inflamed by religion. Before this city, the French princes occupied their ftations, and profecuted their attacks without correfpondence or fubordination: emulation prompted their valour; but their valour was fullied by cruelty, and their emulation degenerated into envy and civil difcord. In the fiege of Nice, the arts and engines of antiquity were employed by the Latins; the mine and the battering-ram, the tortoife, and the belfrey or moveable turret, artificial fire, and the catapult and balift, the fling, and the cross-bow for

80 His Mufulman appellation of Soliman is ufed by the Latins, and his character is highly embellished by Taffo. His Turkish name of Kilidge-Arfsan (A. H. 485- 500. A. D. 1192-1206. See de Guignes's Tables, tom. i. p. 245.) is employed by the Orien tals, and with fome corruption by the Greeks: but little more than his name can be found in the Mahometan writers, who are dry and fulky on the subject of the first crufade (de Guignes, om. iii. p. ii. p. 10-30.).

the

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the cafting of ftones and darts ". In the fpace of CHAP. seven weeks, much labour and blood were expended, and some progress, especially by count Raymond, was made on the fide of the befiegers. But the Turks could pretract their refistance and fecure their efcape, as long as they were mafters of the lake 2 Afcanius, which ftretches several miles to the weftward of the city. The means of conqueft were fupplied by the prudence and industry of Alexius; a great number of boats was tranfported on fledges from the fea to the lake; they were filled with the most dextrous of his archers; the flight of the fultana was intercepted; Nice was invefted by land and water; and a Greek emiffary perfuaded the inhabitants to accept his mafter's protection, and to fave themfelves, by a timely furrender, from the rage of the favages of Europe. In the moment of victory, or at least of hope, the crufaders, thirsting for blood and plunder, were awed by the imperial banner that ftreamed from the citadel; and Alexius guarded with jealous viligance this important conqueft. The murmurs of the chiefs were ftifled by ho-. nour or intereft: and after an halt of nine days, they directed their march towards Phrygia under the guidance of a Greek general, whom they

81 On the fortifications, engines, and fieges of the middle ages, fee Muratori (Antiquitat. Italiæ, tom. ii. differt. xxvi. p. 452-524.). The belfredus, from whence our belfry, was the moveable tower of the ancients (Ducange, tom. i. p. 608.).

82 I cannot forbear remarking the resemblance between the fege and lake of Nice, with the operations of Hernan Cortez before Mexico. See Dr. Robertfon, Hift. of America, 1. v.

LVHI.

CHAP. fufpected of fecret connivance with the fultan. The confort and the principal fervants of Soliman had been honourably reftored without ranfom; and the emperor's generofity to the mifcreants 33 was interpreted as treason to the Christian cause.

Battle of

Doryla 1097, July

um, A.D.

83

Soliman was rather provoked than difmayed by the lofs of his capital: he admonished his fubjects and allies of this ftrange invasion of the western Barbarians; the Turkifh emirs obeyed the call of loyalty or religion; the Turkman hords encamped round his ftandard; and his whole force is loosely ftated by the Chriftians at two hundred, or even three hundred and fixty, thousand horfe. Yet he patiently waited till they had left behind them the fea and the Greek frontier; and hovering on the flanks, obferved their careless and confident progrefs in two columns beyond the view of each other. Some miles before they could reach Dorylæum in Phrygia, the left, and leaft numerous, divifion was surprised, and attacked, and almoft oppreffed, by the Turkish cavalry 8+. The heat of the weather, the clouds of arrows, and the barbarous onfet, overwhelmed

84

83 Mecreant, a word invented by the French crufaders, and confined in that language to its primitive sense. It fhould feem, that the zeal of our ancestors boiled higher, and that they branded every unbeliever as a rascal. A fimilar prejudice ftill lurks in the minds of many who think themfelves Chriftians.

24 Baronius has produced a very doubtful letter to his brother Roger (A.D. 1098, No 15.). The enemies confifted of Medes, Perfians, Chaldæans: be it fo. The firft attack was cum noftro incommodo; true and tender. But why Godfrey of Bouillon and Hugh brothers? Tancred is ftyled filius; of whom certainly not of Roger, nor of Bohemond.

the