|
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.—Part I.
Origin And Numbers Of The First Crusade.—Characters Of The Latin
Princes.—Their March To Constantinople.—Policy Of The Greek
Emperor Alexius.—Conquest Of Nice, Antioch, And Jerusalem, By The
Franks.—Deliverance Of The Holy Sepulchre.— Godfrey Of Bouillon,
First King Of Jerusalem.—Institutions Of The French Or Latin Kingdom.
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.—Part II. Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.—Part III. |
Origin And Numbers Of The First Crusade.—Characters Of The Latin
Princes.—Their March To Constantinople.—Policy Of The Greek
Emperor Alexius.—Conquest Of Nice, Antioch, And Jerusalem, By The
Franks.—Deliverance Of The Holy Sepulchre.— Godfrey Of Bouillon,
First King Of Jerusalem.—Institutions Of The French Or Latin Kingdom.
About twenty years after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Turks, the holy sepulchre was visited by a hermit of the name of Peter, a native of Amiens, in the province of Picardy 1 in France. His resentment and sympathy were excited by his own injuries and the oppression of the Christian name; he mingled his tears with those of the patriarch, and earnestly inquired, if no hopes of relief could be entertained from the Greek emperors of the East. The patriarch exposed the vices and weakness of the successors of Constantine. "I will rouse," exclaimed the hermit, "the martial nations of Europe in your cause;" and Europe was obedient to the call of the hermit. The astonished patriarch dismissed him with epistles of credit and complaint; and no sooner did he land at Bari, than Peter hastened to kiss the feet of the Roman pontiff. His stature was small, his appearance contemptible; but his eye was keen and lively; and he possessed that vehemence of speech, which seldom fails to impart the persuasion of the soul. 2 He was born of a gentleman's family, (for we must now adopt a modern idiom,) and his military service was under the neighboring counts of Boulogne, the heroes of the first crusade. But he soon relinquished the sword and the world; and if it be true, that his wife, however noble, was aged and ugly, he might withdraw, with the less reluctance, from her bed to a convent, and at length to a hermitage. 211 In this austere solitude, his body was emaciated, his fancy was inflamed; whatever he wished, he believed; whatever he believed, he saw in dreams and revelations. From Jerusalem the pilgrim returned an accomplished fanatic; but as he excelled in the popular madness of the times, Pope Urban the Second received him as a prophet, applauded his glorious design, promised to support it in a general council, and encouraged him to proclaim the deliverance of the Holy Land. Invigorated by the approbation of the pontiff, his zealous missionary traversed. with speed and success, the provinces of Italy and France. His diet was abstemious, his prayers long and fervent, and the alms which he received with one hand, he distributed with the other: his head was bare, his feet naked, his meagre body was wrapped in a coarse garment; he bore and displayed a weighty crucifix; and the ass on which he rode was sanctified, in the public eye, by the service of the man of God. He preached to innumerable crowds in the churches, the streets, and the highways: the hermit entered with equal confidence the palace and the cottage; and the people (for all was people) was impetuously moved by his call to repentance and arms. When he painted the sufferings of the natives and pilgrims of Palestine, every heart was melted to compassion; every breast glowed with indignation, when he challenged the warriors of the age to defend their brethren, and rescue their Savior: his ignorance of art and language was compensated by sighs, and tears, and ejaculations; and Peter supplied the deficiency of reason by loud and frequent appeals to Christ and his mother, to the saints and angels of paradise, with whom he had personally conversed. 212 The most perfect orator of Athens might have envied the success of his eloquence; the rustic enthusiast inspired the passions which he felt, and Christendom expected with impatience the counsels and decrees of the supreme pontiff.
1 (return)
[ Whimsical enough is the origin of the name of Picards, and
from thence of Picardie, which does not date later than A.D. 1200. It
was an academical joke, an epithet first applied to the quarrelsome
humor of those students, in the University of Paris, who came from the
frontier of France and Flanders, (Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p. 447,
Longuerue. Description de la France, p. 54.)]
2 (return)
[ William of Tyre (l. i. c. 11, p. 637, 638) thus describes
the hermit: Pusillus, persona contemptibilis, vivacis ingenii, et oculum
habeas perspicacem gratumque, et sponte fluens ei non deerat eloquium.
See Albert Aquensis, p. 185. Guibert, p. 482. Anna Comnena in Alex isd,
l. x. p. 284, &c., with Ducarge's Notes, p. 349.]
211 (return)
[ Wilken considers this as doubtful, (vol. i. p. 47.)—M.]
212 (return)
[ He had seen the Savior in a vision: a letter had fallen
from heaven Wilken, (vol. i. p. 49.)—M.]
The magnanimous spirit of Gregory the Seventh had already embraced the design of arming Europe against Asia; the ardor of his zeal and ambition still breathes in his epistles: from either side of the Alps, fifty thousand Catholics had enlisted under the banner of St. Peter; 3 and his successor reveals his intention of marching at their head against the impious sectaries of Mahomet. But the glory or reproach of executing, though not in person, this holy enterprise, was reserved for Urban the Second, 4 the most faithful of his disciples. He undertook the conquest of the East, whilst the larger portion of Rome was possessed and fortified by his rival Guibert of Ravenna, who contended with Urban for the name and honors of the pontificate. He attempted to unite the powers of the West, at a time when the princes were separated from the church, and the people from their princes, by the excommunication which himself and his predecessors had thundered against the emperor and the king of France. Philip the First, of France, supported with patience the censures which he had provoked by his scandalous life and adulterous marriage. Henry the Fourth, of Germany, asserted the right of investitures, the prerogative of confirming his bishops by the delivery of the ring and crosier. But the emperor's party was crushed in Italy by the arms of the Normans and the Countess Mathilda; and the long quarrel had been recently envenomed by the revolt of his son Conrad and the shame of his wife, 5 who, in the synods of Constance and Placentia, confessed the manifold prostitutions to which she had been exposed by a husband regardless of her honor and his own. 6 So popular was the cause of Urban, so weighty was his influence, that the council which he summoned at Placentia 7 was composed of two hundred bishops of Italy, France, Burgandy, Swabia, and Bavaria. Four thousand of the clergy, and thirty thousand of the laity, attended this important meeting; and, as the most spacious cathedral would have been inadequate to the multitude, the session of seven days was held in a plain adjacent to the city. The ambassadors of the Greek emperor, Alexius Comnenus, were introduced to plead the distress of their sovereign, and the danger of Constantinople, which was divided only by a narrow sea from the victorious Turks, the common enemies of the Christian name. In their suppliant address they flattered the pride of the Latin princes; and, appealing at once to their policy and religion, exhorted them to repel the Barbarians on the confines of Asia, rather than to expect them in the heart of Europe. At the sad tale of the misery and perils of their Eastern brethren, the assembly burst into tears; the most eager champions declared their readiness to march; and the Greek ambassadors were dismissed with the assurance of a speedy and powerful succor. The relief of Constantinople was included in the larger and most distant project of the deliverance of Jerusalem; but the prudent Urban adjourned the final decision to a second synod, which he proposed to celebrate in some city of France in the autumn of the same year. The short delay would propagate the flame of enthusiasm; and his firmest hope was in a nation of soldiers 8 still proud of the preeminence of their name, and ambitious to emulate their hero Charlemagne, 9 who, in the popular romance of Turpin, 10 had achieved the conquest of the Holy Land. A latent motive of affection or vanity might influence the choice of Urban: he was himself a native of France, a monk of Clugny, and the first of his countrymen who ascended the throne of St. Peter. The pope had illustrated his family and province; nor is there perhaps a more exquisite gratification than to revisit, in a conspicuous dignity, the humble and laborious scenes of our youth.
3 (return)
[ Ultra quinquaginta millia, si me possunt in expeditione pro
duce et pontifice habere, armata manu volunt in inimicos Dei insurgere
et ad sepulchrum Domini ipso ducente pervenire, (Gregor. vii. epist. ii.
31, in tom. xii. 322, concil.)]
4 (return)
[ See the original lives of Urban II. by Pandulphus Pisanus
and Bernardus Guido, in Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. tom. iii. pars i.
p. 352, 353.]
5 (return)
[ She is known by the different names of Praxes, Eupraecia,
Eufrasia, and Adelais; and was the daughter of a Russian prince, and the
widow of a margrave of Brandenburgh. (Struv. Corpus Hist. Germanicae, p.
340.)]
6 (return)
[ Henricus odio eam coepit habere: ideo incarceravit eam,
et concessit ut plerique vim ei inferrent; immo filium hortans ut eam
subagitaret, (Dodechin, Continuat. Marian. Scot. apud Baron. A.D. 1093,
No. 4.) In the synod of Constance, she is described by Bertholdus, rerum
inspector: quae se tantas et tam inauditas fornicationum spur citias, et
a tantis passam fuisse conquesta est, &c.; and again at Placentia: satis
misericorditer suscepit, eo quod ipsam tantas spurcitias pertulisse pro
certo cognoverit papa cum sancta synodo. Apud Baron. A.D. 1093, No. 4,
1094, No. 3. A rare subject for the infallible decision of a pope and
council. These abominations are repugnant to every principle of human
nature, which is not altered by a dispute about rings and crosiers. Yet
it should seem, that the wretched woman was tempted by the priests to
relate or subscribe some infamous stories of herself and her husband.]
7 (return)
[ See the narrative and acts of the synod of Placentia,
Concil. tom. xii. p. 821, &c.]
8 (return)
[ Guibert, himself a Frenchman, praises the piety and valor
of the French nation, the author and example of the crusades: Gens
nobilis, prudens, bellicosa, dapsilis et nitida .... Quos enim Britones,
Anglos, Ligures, si bonis eos moribus videamus, non illico Francos
homines appellemus? (p. 478.) He owns, however, that the vivacity of the
French degenerates into petulance among foreigners, (p. 488.) and vain
loquaciousness, (p. 502.)]
9 (return)
[ Per viam quam jamdudum Carolus Magnus mirificus rex
Francorum aptari fecit usque C. P., (Gesta Francorum, p. 1. Robert.
Monach. Hist. Hieros. l. i. p. 33, &c.)]
10 (return)
[ John Tilpinus, or Turpinus, was archbishop of Rheims, A.D.
773. After the year 1000, this romance was composed in his name, by
a monk of the borders of France and Spain; and such was the idea of
ecclesiastical merit, that he describes himself as a fighting and
drinking priest! Yet the book of lies was pronounced authentic by Pope
Calixtus II., (A.D. 1122,) and is respectfully quoted by the abbot
Suger, in the great Chronicles of St. Denys, (Fabric Bibliot. Latin
Medii Aevi, edit. Mansi, tom. iv. p. 161.)]
It may occasion some surprise that the Roman pontiff should erect, in the heart of France, the tribunal from whence he hurled his anathemas against the king; but our surprise will vanish so soon as we form a just estimate of a king of France of the eleventh century. 11 Philip the First was the great-grandson of Hugh Capet, the founder of the present race, who, in the decline of Charlemagne's posterity, added the regal title to his patrimonial estates of Paris and Orleans. In this narrow compass, he was possessed of wealth and jurisdiction; but in the rest of France, Hugh and his first descendants were no more than the feudal lords of about sixty dukes and counts, of independent and hereditary power, 12 who disdained the control of laws and legal assemblies, and whose disregard of their sovereign was revenged by the disobedience of their inferior vassals. At Clermont, in the territories of the count of Auvergne, 13 the pope might brave with impunity the resentment of Philip; and the council which he convened in that city was not less numerous or respectable than the synod of Placentia. 14 Besides his court and council of Roman cardinals, he was supported by thirteen archbishops and two hundred and twenty-five bishops: the number of mitred prelates was computed at four hundred; and the fathers of the church were blessed by the saints and enlightened by the doctors of the age. From the adjacent kingdoms, a martial train of lords and knights of power and renown attended the council, 15 in high expectation of its resolves; and such was the ardor of zeal and curiosity, that the city was filled, and many thousands, in the month of November, erected their tents or huts in the open field. A session of eight days produced some useful or edifying canons for the reformation of manners; a severe censure was pronounced against the license of private war; the Truce of God 16 was confirmed, a suspension of hostilities during four days of the week; women and priests were placed under the safeguard of the church; and a protection of three years was extended to husbandmen and merchants, the defenceless victims of military rapine. But a law, however venerable be the sanction, cannot suddenly transform the temper of the times; and the benevolent efforts of Urban deserve the less praise, since he labored to appease some domestic quarrels that he might spread the flames of war from the Atlantic to the Euphrates. From the synod of Placentia, the rumor of his great design had gone forth among the nations: the clergy on their return had preached in every diocese the merit and glory of the deliverance of the Holy Land; and when the pope ascended a lofty scaffold in the market-place of Clermont, his eloquence was addressed to a well-prepared and impatient audience. His topics were obvious, his exhortation was vehement, his success inevitable. The orator was interrupted by the shout of thousands, who with one voice, and in their rustic idiom, exclaimed aloud, "God wills it, God wills it." 17 "It is indeed the will of God," replied the pope; "and let this memorable word, the inspiration surely of the Holy Spirit, be forever adopted as your cry of battle, to animate the devotion and courage of the champions of Christ. His cross is the symbol of your salvation; wear it, a red, a bloody cross, as an external mark, on your breasts or shoulders, as a pledge of your sacred and irrevocable engagement." The proposal was joyfully accepted; great numbers, both of the clergy and laity, impressed on their garments the sign of the cross, 18 and solicited the pope to march at their head. This dangerous honor was declined by the more prudent successor of Gregory, who alleged the schism of the church, and the duties of his pastoral office, recommending to the faithful, who were disqualified by sex or profession, by age or infirmity, to aid, with their prayers and alms, the personal service of their robust brethren. The name and powers of his legate he devolved on Adhemar bishop of Puy, the first who had received the cross at his hands. The foremost of the temporal chiefs was Raymond count of Thoulouse, whose ambassadors in the council excused the absence, and pledged the honor, of their master. After the confession and absolution of their sins, the champions of the cross were dismissed with a superfluous admonition to invite their countrymen and friends; and their departure for the Holy Land was fixed to the festival of the Assumption, the fifteenth of August, of the ensuing year. 19
11 (return)
[ See Etat de la France, by the Count de Boulainvilliers,
tom. i. p. 180-182, and the second volume of the Observations sur
l'Histoire de France, by the Abbe de Mably.]
12 (return)
[ In the provinces to the south of the Loire, the first
Capetians were scarcely allowed a feudal supremacy. On all sides,
Normandy, Bretagne, Aquitain, Burgundy, Lorraine, and Flanders,
contracted the same and limits of the proper France. See Hadrian Vales.
Notitia Galliarum]
13 (return)
[ These counts, a younger branch of the dukes of Aquitain,
were at length despoiled of the greatest part of their country by Philip
Augustus. The bishops of Clermont gradually became princes of the city.
Melanges, tires d'une grand Bibliotheque, tom. xxxvi. p. 288, &c.]
14 (return)
[ See the Acts of the council of Clermont, Concil. tom. xii.
p. 829, &c.]
15 (return)
[ Confluxerunt ad concilium e multis regionibus, viri
potentes et honorati, innumeri quamvis cingulo laicalis militiae
superbi, (Baldric, an eye-witness, p. 86-88. Robert. Monach. p. 31, 32.
Will. Tyr. i. 14, 15, p. 639-641. Guibert, p. 478-480. Fulcher. Carnot.
p. 382.)]
16 (return)
[ The Truce of God (Treva, or Treuga Dei) was first invented
in Aquitain, A.D. 1032; blamed by some bishops as an occasion of
perjury, and rejected by the Normans as contrary to their privileges
(Ducange, Gloss Latin. tom. vi. p. 682-685.)]
17 (return)
[ Deus vult, Deus vult! was the pure acclamation of
the clergy who understood Latin, (Robert. Mon. l. i. p. 32.) By the
illiterate laity, who spoke the Provincial or Limousin idiom, it was
corrupted to Deus lo volt, or Diex el volt. See Chron. Casinense, l. iv.
c. 11, p. 497, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. iv., and Ducange,
(Dissertat xi. p. 207, sur Joinville, and Gloss. Latin. tom. ii. p.
690,) who, in his preface, produces a very difficult specimen of the
dialect of Rovergue, A.D. 1100, very near, both in time and place, to
the council of Clermont, (p. 15, 16.)]
18 (return)
[ Most commonly on their shoulders, in gold, or silk, or
cloth sewed on their garments. In the first crusade, all were red, in
the third, the French alone preserved that color, while green crosses
were adopted by the Flemings, and white by the English, (Ducange, tom.
ii. p. 651.) Yet in England, the red ever appears the favorite, and as
if were, the national, color of our military ensigns and uniforms.]
19 (return)
[ Bongarsius, who has published the original writers of the
crusades, adopts, with much complacency, the fanatic title of Guibertus,
Gesta Dei per Francos; though some critics propose to read Gesta Diaboli
per Francos, (Hanoviae, 1611, two vols. in folio.) I shall briefly
enumerate, as they stand in this collection, the authors whom I have
used for the first crusade.
I. Gesta Francorum.
II. Robertus Monachus.
III. Baldricus.
IV. Raimundus de Agiles.
V. Albertus Aquensis VI. Fulcherius Carnotensis.
VII. Guibertus.
VIII. Willielmus Tyriensis. Muratori has given us,
IX. Radulphus Cadomensis de Gestis Tancredi,
(Script. Rer. Ital. tom. v. p. 285-333,)
X. Bernardus Thesaurarius de Acquisitione Terrae Sanctae,
(tom. vii. p. 664-848.)
The last of these was unknown to a late French historian, who has given a large and critical list of the writers of the crusades, (Esprit des Croisades, tom. i. p. 13-141,) and most of whose judgments my own experience will allow me to ratify. It was late before I could obtain a sight of the French historians collected by Duchesne. I. Petri Tudebodi Sacerdotis Sivracensis Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere, (tom. iv. p. 773-815,) has been transfused into the first anonymous writer of Bongarsius. II. The Metrical History of the first Crusade, in vii. books, (p. 890-912,) is of small value or account. * Note: Several new documents, particularly from the East, have been collected by the industry of the modern historians of the crusades, M. Michaud and Wilken.—M.]
So familiar, and as it were so natural to man, is the practice of violence, that our indulgence allows the slightest provocation, the most disputable right, as a sufficient ground of national hostility. But the name and nature of a holy war demands a more rigorous scrutiny; nor can we hastily believe, that the servants of the Prince of Peace would unsheathe the sword of destruction, unless the motive were pure, the quarrel legitimate, and the necessity inevitable. The policy of an action may be determined from the tardy lessons of experience; but, before we act, our conscience should be satisfied of the justice and propriety of our enterprise. In the age of the crusades, the Christians, both of the East and West, were persuaded of their lawfulness and merit; their arguments are clouded by the perpetual abuse of Scripture and rhetoric; but they seem to insist on the right of natural and religious defence, their peculiar title to the Holy Land, and the impiety of their Pagan and Mahometan foes. 20
I. The right of a just defence may fairly include our civil and spiritual allies: it depends on the existence of danger; and that danger must be estimated by the twofold consideration of the malice, and the power, of our enemies. A pernicious tenet has been imputed to the Mahometans, the duty of extirpating all other religions by the sword. This charge of ignorance and bigotry is refuted by the Koran, by the history of the Mussulman conquerors, and by their public and legal toleration of the Christian worship. But it cannot be denied, that the Oriental churches are depressed under their iron yoke; that, in peace and war, they assert a divine and indefeasible claim of universal empire; and that, in their orthodox creed, the unbelieving nations are continually threatened with the loss of religion or liberty. In the eleventh century, the victorious arms of the Turks presented a real and urgent apprehension of these losses. They had subdued, in less than thirty years, the kingdoms of Asia, as far as Jerusalem and the Hellespont; and the Greek empire tottered on the verge of destruction. Besides an honest sympathy for their brethren, the Latins had a right and interest in the support of Constantinople, the most important barrier of the West; and the privilege of defence must reach to prevent, as well as to repel, an impending assault. But this salutary purpose might have been accomplished by a moderate succor; and our calmer reason must disclaim the innumerable hosts, and remote operations, which overwhelmed Asia and depopulated Europe. 2011
20 (return)
[ If the reader will turn to the first scene of the First
Part of Henry the Fourth, he will see in the text of Shakespeare the
natural feelings of enthusiasm; and in the notes of Dr. Johnson the
workings of a bigoted, though vigorous mind, greedy of every pretence to
hate and persecute those who dissent from his creed.]
2011 (return)
[ The manner in which the war was conducted surely has
little relation to the abstract question of the justice or injustice of
the war. The most just and necessary war may be conducted with the
most prodigal waste of human life, and the wildest fanaticism; the
most unjust with the coolest moderation and consummate generalship. The
question is, whether the liberties and religion of Europe were in danger
from the aggressions of Mahometanism? If so, it is difficult to
limit the right, though it may be proper to question the wisdom, of
overwhelming the enemy with the armed population of a whole continent,
and repelling, if possible, the invading conqueror into his native
deserts. The crusades are monuments of human folly! but to which of
the more regular wars civilized. Europe, waged for personal ambition or
national jealousy, will our calmer reason appeal as monuments either of
human justice or human wisdom?—M.]
II. Palestine could add nothing to the strength or safety of the Latins; and fanaticism alone could pretend to justify the conquest of that distant and narrow province. The Christians affirmed that their inalienable title to the promised land had been sealed by the blood of their divine Savior; it was their right and duty to rescue their inheritance from the unjust possessors, who profaned his sepulchre, and oppressed the pilgrimage of his disciples. Vainly would it be alleged that the preeminence of Jerusalem, and the sanctity of Palestine, have been abolished with the Mosaic law; that the God of the Christians is not a local deity, and that the recovery of Bethlem or Calvary, his cradle or his tomb, will not atone for the violation of the moral precepts of the gospel. Such arguments glance aside from the leaden shield of superstition; and the religious mind will not easily relinquish its hold on the sacred ground of mystery and miracle.
III. But the holy wars which have been waged in every climate of the globe, from Egypt to Livonia, and from Peru to Hindostan, require the support of some more general and flexible tenet. It has been often supposed, and sometimes affirmed, that a difference of religion is a worthy cause of hostility; that obstinate unbelievers may be slain or subdued by the champions of the cross; and that grace is the sole fountain of dominion as well as of mercy. 2012 Above four hundred years before the first crusade, the eastern and western provinces of the Roman empire had been acquired about the same time, and in the same manner, by the Barbarians of Germany and Arabia. Time and treaties had legitimated the conquest of the Christian Franks; but in the eyes of their subjects and neighbors, the Mahometan princes were still tyrants and usurpers, who, by the arms of war or rebellion, might be lawfully driven from their unlawful possession. 21
2012 (return)
[ "God," says the abbot Guibert, "invented the crusades as
a new way for the laity to atone for their sins and to merit salvation."
This extraordinary and characteristic passage must be given entire.
"Deus nostro tempore praelia sancta instituit, ut ordo equestris et
vulgus oberrans qui vetustae Paganitatis exemplo in mutuas versabatur
caedes, novum reperirent salutis promerendae genus, ut nec funditus
electa, ut fieri assolet, monastica conversatione, seu religiosa
qualibet professione saeculum relinquere congerentur; sed sub consueta
licentia et habitu ex suo ipsorum officio Dei aliquantenus gratiam
consequerentur." Guib. Abbas, p. 371. See Wilken, vol. i. p. 63.—M.]
21 (return)
[ The vith Discourse of Fleury on Ecclesiastical History
(p. 223-261) contains an accurate and rational view of the causes and
effects of the crusades.]
As the manners of the Christians were relaxed, their discipline of penance 22 was enforced; and with the multiplication of sins, the remedies were multiplied. In the primitive church, a voluntary and open confession prepared the work of atonement. In the middle ages, the bishops and priests interrogated the criminal; compelled him to account for his thoughts, words, and actions; and prescribed the terms of his reconciliation with God. But as this discretionary power might alternately be abused by indulgence and tyranny, a rule of discipline was framed, to inform and regulate the spiritual judges. This mode of legislation was invented by the Greeks; their penitentials 23 were translated, or imitated, in the Latin church; and, in the time of Charlemagne, the clergy of every diocese were provided with a code, which they prudently concealed from the knowledge of the vulgar. In this dangerous estimate of crimes and punishments, each case was supposed, each difference was remarked, by the experience or penetration of the monks; some sins are enumerated which innocence could not have suspected, and others which reason cannot believe; and the more ordinary offences of fornication and adultery, of perjury and sacrilege, of rapine and murder, were expiated by a penance, which, according to the various circumstances, was prolonged from forty days to seven years. During this term of mortification, the patient was healed, the criminal was absolved, by a salutary regimen of fasts and prayers: the disorder of his dress was expressive of grief and remorse; and he humbly abstained from all the business and pleasure of social life. But the rigid execution of these laws would have depopulated the palace, the camp, and the city; the Barbarians of the West believed and trembled; but nature often rebelled against principle; and the magistrate labored without effect to enforce the jurisdiction of the priest. A literal accomplishment of penance was indeed impracticable: the guilt of adultery was multiplied by daily repetition; that of homicide might involve the massacre of a whole people; each act was separately numbered; and, in those times of anarchy and vice, a modest sinner might easily incur a debt of three hundred years. His insolvency was relieved by a commutation, or indulgence: a year of penance was appreciated at twenty-six solidi 24 of silver, about four pounds sterling, for the rich; at three solidi, or nine shillings, for the indigent: and these alms were soon appropriated to the use of the church, which derived, from the redemption of sins, an inexhaustible source of opulence and dominion. A debt of three hundred years, or twelve hundred pounds, was enough to impoverish a plentiful fortune; the scarcity of gold and silver was supplied by the alienation of land; and the princely donations of Pepin and Charlemagne are expressly given for the remedy of their soul. It is a maxim of the civil law, that whosoever cannot pay with his purse, must pay with his body; and the practice of flagellation was adopted by the monks, a cheap, though painful equivalent. By a fantastic arithmetic, a year of penance was taxed at three thousand lashes; 25 and such was the skill and patience of a famous hermit, St. Dominic of the iron Cuirass, 26 that in six days he could discharge an entire century, by a whipping of three hundred thousand stripes. His example was followed by many penitents of both sexes; and, as a vicarious sacrifice was accepted, a sturdy disciplinarian might expiate on his own back the sins of his benefactors. 27 These compensations of the purse and the person introduced, in the eleventh century, a more honorable mode of satisfaction. The merit of military service against the Saracens of Africa and Spain had been allowed by the predecessors of Urban the Second. In the council of Clermont, that pope proclaimed a plenary indulgence to those who should enlist under the banner of the cross; the absolution of all their sins, and a full receipt for all that might be due of canonical penance. 28 The cold philosophy of modern times is incapable of feeling the impression that was made on a sinful and fanatic world. At the voice of their pastor, the robber, the incendiary, the homicide, arose by thousands to redeem their souls, by repeating on the infidels the same deeds which they had exercised against their Christian brethren; and the terms of atonement were eagerly embraced by offenders of every rank and denomination. None were pure; none were exempt from the guilt and penalty of sin; and those who were the least amenable to the justice of God and the church were the best entitled to the temporal and eternal recompense of their pious courage. If they fell, the spirit of the Latin clergy did not hesitate to adorn their tomb with the crown of martyrdom; 29 and should they survive, they could expect without impatience the delay and increase of their heavenly reward. They offered their blood to the Son of God, who had laid down his life for their salvation: they took up the cross, and entered with confidence into the way of the Lord. His providence would watch over their safety; perhaps his visible and miraculous power would smooth the difficulties of their holy enterprise. The cloud and pillar of Jehovah had marched before the Israelites into the promised land. Might not the Christians more reasonably hope that the rivers would open for their passage; that the walls of their strongest cities would fall at the sound of their trumpets; and that the sun would be arrested in his mid career, to allow them time for the destruction of the infidels?
22 (return)
[ The penance, indulgences, &c., of the middle ages are
amply discussed by Muratori, (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. v.
dissert. lxviii. p. 709-768,) and by M. Chais, (Lettres sur les Jubiles
et les Indulgences, tom. ii. lettres 21 & 22, p. 478-556,) with this
difference, that the abuses of superstition are mildly, perhaps faintly,
exposed by the learned Italian, and peevishly magnified by the Dutch
minister.]
23 (return)
[ Schmidt (Histoire des Allemands, tom. ii. p. 211-220,
452-462) gives an abstract of the Penitential of Rhegino in the ninth,
and of Burchard in the tenth, century. In one year, five-and-thirty
murders were perpetrated at Worms.]
24 (return)
[ Till the xiith century, we may support the clear account
of xii. denarii, or pence, to the solidus, or shilling; and xx. solidi
to the pound weight of silver, about the pound sterling. Our money is
diminished to a third, and the French to a fiftieth, of this primitive
standard.]
25 (return)
[ Each century of lashes was sanctified with a recital of a
psalm, and the whole Psalter, with the accompaniment of 15,000 stripes,
was equivalent to five years.]
26 (return)
[ The Life and Achievements of St. Dominic Loricatus was
composed by his friend and admirer, Peter Damianus. See Fleury, Hist.
Eccles. tom. xiii. p. 96-104. Baronius, A.D. 1056, No. 7, who observes,
from Damianus, how fashionable, even among ladies of quality, (sublimis
generis,) this expiation (purgatorii genus) was grown.]
27 (return)
[ At a quarter, or even half a rial a lash, Sancho Panza
was a cheaper, and possibly not a more dishonest, workman. I remember in
Pere Labat (Voyages en Italie, tom. vii. p. 16-29) a very lively picture
of the dexterity of one of these artists.]
28 (return)
[ Quicunque pro sola devotione, non pro honoris vel pecuniae
adoptione, ad liberandam ecclesiam Dei Jerusalem profectus fuerit, iter
illud pro omni poenitentia reputetur. Canon. Concil. Claromont. ii.
p. 829. Guibert styles it novum salutis genus, (p. 471,) and is almost
philosophical on the subject. * Note: See note, page 546.—M.]
29 (return)
[ Such at least was the belief of the crusaders, and such is
the uniform style of the historians, (Esprit des Croisades, tom. iii.
p. 477;) but the prayer for the repose of their souls is inconsistent in
orthodox theology with the merits of martyrdom.]
Of the chiefs and soldiers who marched to the holy sepulchre, I will dare to affirm, that all were prompted by the spirit of enthusiasm; the belief of merit, the hope of reward, and the assurance of divine aid. But I am equally persuaded, that in many it was not the sole, that in some it was not the leading, principle of action. The use and abuse of religion are feeble to stem, they are strong and irresistible to impel, the stream of national manners. Against the private wars of the Barbarians, their bloody tournaments, licentious love, and judicial duels, the popes and synods might ineffectually thunder. It is a more easy task to provoke the metaphysical disputes of the Greeks, to drive into the cloister the victims of anarchy or despotism, to sanctify the patience of slaves and cowards, or to assume the merit of the humanity and benevolence of modern Christians. War and exercise were the reigning passions of the Franks or Latins; they were enjoined, as a penance, to gratify those passions, to visit distant lands, and to draw their swords against the nation of the East. Their victory, or even their attempt, would immortalize the names of the intrepid heroes of the cross; and the purest piety could not be insensible to the most splendid prospect of military glory. In the petty quarrels of Europe, they shed the blood of their friends and countrymen, for the acquisition perhaps of a castle or a village. They could march with alacrity against the distant and hostile nations who were devoted to their arms; their fancy already grasped the golden sceptres of Asia; and the conquest of Apulia and Sicily by the Normans might exalt to royalty the hopes of the most private adventurer. Christendom, in her rudest state, must have yielded to the climate and cultivation of the Mahometan countries; and their natural and artificial wealth had been magnified by the tales of pilgrims, and the gifts of an imperfect commerce. The vulgar, both the great and small, were taught to believe every wonder, of lands flowing with milk and honey, of mines and treasures, of gold and diamonds, of palaces of marble and jasper, and of odoriferous groves of cinnamon and frankincense. In this earthly paradise, each warrior depended on his sword to carve a plenteous and honorable establishment, which he measured only by the extent of his wishes. 30 Their vassals and soldiers trusted their fortunes to God and their master: the spoils of a Turkish emir might enrich the meanest follower of the camp; and the flavor of the wines, the beauty of the Grecian women, 31 were temptations more adapted to the nature, than to the profession, of the champions of the cross. The love of freedom was a powerful incitement to the multitudes who were oppressed by feudal or ecclesiastical tyranny. Under this holy sign, the peasants and burghers, who were attached to the servitude of the glebe, might escape from a haughty lord, and transplant themselves and their families to a land of liberty. The monk might release himself from the discipline of his convent: the debtor might suspend the accumulation of usury, and the pursuit of his creditors; and outlaws and malefactors of every cast might continue to brave the laws and elude the punishment of their crimes. 32
30 (return)
[ The same hopes were displayed in the letters of the
adventurers ad animandos qui in Francia residerant. Hugh de Reiteste
could boast, that his share amounted to one abbey and ten castles, of
the yearly value of 1500 marks, and that he should acquire a hundred
castles by the conquest of Aleppo, (Guibert, p. 554, 555.)]
31 (return)
[ In his genuine or fictitious letter to the count of
Flanders, Alexius mingles with the danger of the church, and the relics
of saints, the auri et argenti amor, and pulcherrimarum foeminarum
voluptas, (p. 476;) as if, says the indignant Guibert, the Greek women
were handsomer than those of France.]
32 (return)
[ See the privileges of the Crucesignati, freedom from debt,
usury injury, secular justice, &c. The pope was their perpetual guardian
(Ducange, tom. ii. p. 651, 652.)]
These motives were potent and numerous: when we have singly computed their weight on the mind of each individual, we must add the infinite series, the multiplying powers, of example and fashion. The first proselytes became the warmest and most effectual missionaries of the cross: among their friends and countrymen they preached the duty, the merit, and the recompense, of their holy vow; and the most reluctant hearers were insensibly drawn within the whirlpool of persuasion and authority. The martial youths were fired by the reproach or suspicion of cowardice; the opportunity of visiting with an army the sepulchre of Christ was embraced by the old and infirm, by women and children, who consulted rather their zeal than their strength; and those who in the evening had derided the folly of their companions, were the most eager, the ensuing day, to tread in their footsteps. The ignorance, which magnified the hopes, diminished the perils, of the enterprise. Since the Turkish conquest, the paths of pilgrimage were obliterated; the chiefs themselves had an imperfect notion of the length of the way and the state of their enemies; and such was the stupidity of the people, that, at the sight of the first city or castle beyond the limits of their knowledge, they were ready to ask whether that was not the Jerusalem, the term and object of their labors. Yet the more prudent of the crusaders, who were not sure that they should be fed from heaven with a shower of quails or manna, provided themselves with those precious metals, which, in every country, are the representatives of every commodity. To defray, according to their rank, the expenses of the road, princes alienated their provinces, nobles their lands and castles, peasants their cattle and the instruments of husbandry. The value of property was depreciated by the eager competition of multitudes; while the price of arms and horses was raised to an exorbitant height by the wants and impatience of the buyers. 33 Those who remained at home, with sense and money, were enriched by the epidemical disease: the sovereigns acquired at a cheap rate the domains of their vassals; and the ecclesiastical purchasers completed the payment by the assurance of their prayers. The cross, which was commonly sewed on the garment, in cloth or silk, was inscribed by some zealots on their skin: a hot iron, or indelible liquor, was applied to perpetuate the mark; and a crafty monk, who showed the miraculous impression on his breast was repaid with the popular veneration and the richest benefices of Palestine. 34
33 (return)
[ Guibert (p. 481) paints in lively colors this general
emotion. He was one of the few contemporaries who had genius enough to
feel the astonishing scenes that were passing before their eyes. Erat
itaque videre miraculum, caro omnes emere, atque vili vendere, &c.]
34 (return)
[ Some instances of these stigmata are given in the Esprit
des Croisades, (tom. iii. p. 169 &c.,) from authors whom I have not
seen]
The fifteenth of August had been fixed in the council of Clermont for the departure of the pilgrims; but the day was anticipated by the thoughtless and needy crowd of plebeians, and I shall briefly despatch the calamities which they inflicted and suffered, before I enter on the more serious and successful enterprise of the chiefs. Early in the spring, from the confines of France and Lorraine, above sixty thousand of the populace of both sexes flocked round the first missionary of the crusade, and pressed him with clamorous importunity to lead them to the holy sepulchre. The hermit, assuming the character, without the talents or authority, of a general, impelled or obeyed the forward impulse of his votaries along the banks of the Rhine and Danube. Their wants and numbers soon compelled them to separate, and his lieutenant, Walter the Penniless, a valiant though needy soldier, conducted a van guard of pilgrims, whose condition may be determined from the proportion of eight horsemen to fifteen thousand 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 a herd of two hundred thousand, the most stupid and savage refuse of the people, who mingled with their devotion a brutal license 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, 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.
35 (return)
[ Fuit et aliud scelus detestabile in hac congregatione
pedestris populi stulti et vesanae levitatis, anserem quendam divino
spiritu asserebant afflatum, et capellam non minus eodem repletam, et
has sibi duces secundae viae fecerant, &c., (Albert. Aquensis, l. 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
descend ants would have glossed over with some specious and subtile
allegory. * Note: A singular "allegoric" explanation of this strange
fact has recently been broached: it is connected with the charge of
idolatry and Eastern heretical opinions subsequently made against
the Templars. "We have no doubt that they were Manichee or Gnostic
standards." (The author says the animals themselves were carried before
the army.—M.) "The goose, in Egyptian symbols, as every Egyptian
scholar knows, meant 'divine Son,' or 'Son of God.' The goat meant
Typhon, or Devil. Thus we have the Manichee opposing principles of good
and evil, as standards, at the head of the ignorant mob of crusading
invaders. Can any one doubt that a large portion of this host must have
been infected with the Manichee or Gnostic idolatry?" Account of the
Temple Church by R. W. Billings, p. 5 London. 1838. This is, at all
events, a curious coincidence, especially considered in connection with
the extensive dissemination of the Paulician opinions among the common
people of Europe. At any rate, in so inexplicable a matter, we are
inclined to catch at any explanation, however wild or subtile.—M.]
36 (return)
[ 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 (return)
[ 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) admonishes the Oriental Franks, non
sunt persequendi Judaei, non sunt trucidandi. The contrary doctrine had
been preached by a rival monk. * Note: This is an unjust sarcasm against
St. Bernard. He stood above all rivalry of this kind See note 31, c. l
x.—M]
Between the frontiers of Austria and the seat of the Byzan tine monarchy, the crusaders were compelled to traverse as interval of six hundred miles; the wild and desolate countries of Hungary 38 and Bulgaria. The soil is fruitful, and intersected 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 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 praefect of Bulgaria commanded a regular force; 381 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 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 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 rumor that their foremost companions were rioting in the spoils of his capital, Soliman 391 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. 41
38 (return)
[ See the contemporary description of Hungary in Otho of
Frisin gen, l. ii. c. 31, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom.
vi. p. 665 666.]
381 (return)
[ 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 to
Nissa, where, at first, he was hospitably received: but an accidental
quar rel taking place, he suffered a great defeat. Wilken, vol. i. p.
84-86—M.]
39 (return)
[ 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 Hungariae, tom. iii. p. 19-53.)]
391 (return)
[ 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 Lion," 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. and Extraits des Aut. Arab. rel. aux
Croisades, par M. Reinaud Paris, 1829, p. 3. His kingdom extended from
the Orontes to the Euphra tes, and as far as the Bosphorus. Kilidje
Arslan must uniformly be substituted for Soliman. Brosset note on Le
Beau, tom. xv. p. 311.—M.]
40 (return)
[ Anna Comnena (Alexias, l. x. p. 287) describes this as a
mountain. In the siege of Nice, such were used by the Franks themselves
as the materials of a wall.]
41 (return)
[ See table on following page.]
"To save time and space, I shall represent, in a short table, the particular references to the great events of the first crusade."
[See Table 1.: Events Of The First Crusade]
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 kin`gs 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 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 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 invested with that ducal title, which has been improperly transferred to his lordship of Bouillon in the Ardennes. 44 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 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 45 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 composed of fourscore thousand foot and about ten thousand horse. II. In the parliament that was held at Paris, in the 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 of the Great was applied, not so much to his merit or possessions, (though neither were contemptible,) as to the royal birth of the brother of the king of France. 46 Robert, duke of Normandy, was the eldest son of William the Conqueror; but on his father's death he was deprived of the kingdom of England, by his own indolence and the activity of his brother Rufus. The worth of Robert was degraded by an excessive levity and easiness of temper: his cheerfulness seduced him to the indulgence of pleasure; his profuse liberality impoverished the prince and people; his indiscriminate clemency multiplied the number of offenders; and the amiable qualities of a private man became the essential defects of a sovereign. For the trifling sum of ten thousand marks, he mortgaged Normandy during his absence to the English usurper; 47 but his engagement and behavior in the holy war announced in Robert a reformation of manners, and restored him in some degree to the public esteem. Another Robert was count of Flanders, a royal province, which, in this century, gave three queens to the thrones of France, England, and Denmark: he was surnamed the Sword and Lance of the Christians; but in the exploits of a soldier he sometimes forgot the duties of a general. Stephen, count of Chartres, of Blois, and of Troyes, was one of the richest princes of the age; and the number of his castles has been compared to the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year. His mind was improved by literature; and, in the council of the chiefs, the eloquent Stephen 48 was chosen to discharge the office of their president. These four were the principal leaders of the French, the Normans, and the pilgrims of the British isles: but the list of the barons who were possessed of three or four towns would exceed, says a contemporary, the catalogue of the Trojan war. 49 III. In the south of France, the command was assumed by Adhemar bishop of Puy, the pope egate, and by Raymond count of St. Giles and Thoulouse who added the prouder titles of duke of Narbonne and marquis of Provence. The former was a respectable prelate, alike qualified for this world and the next. The latter was a veteran warrior, who had fought against the Saracens of Spain, and who consecrated his declining age, not only to the deliverance, but to the perpetual service, of the holy sepulchre. His experience and riches gave him a strong ascendant in the Christian camp, whose distress he was often able, and sometimes willing, to relieve. But it was easier for him to extort the praise of the Infidels, than to preserve the love of his subjects and associates. His eminent qualities were clouded by a temper haughty, envious, and obstinate; and, though he resigned an ample patrimony for the cause of God, his piety, in the public opinion, was not exempt from avarice and ambition. 50 A mercantile, rather than a martial, spirit prevailed among his provincials, 51 a common name, which included the natives of Auvergne and Languedoc, 52 the vassals of the kingdom of Burgundy or Arles. From the adjacent frontier of Spain he drew a band of hardy adventurers; as he marched through Lombardy, a crowd of Italians flocked to his standard, and his united force consisted of one hundred thousand horse and foot. If Raymond was the first to enlist and the last to depart, the delay may be excused by the greatness of his preparation and the promise of an everlasting farewell. IV. The name of Bohemond, the son of Robert Guiscard, was already famous by his double victory over the Greek emperor; but his father's will had reduced him to the principality of Tarentum, and the remembrance of his Eastern trophies, till he was awakened by the rumor and passage of the French pilgrims. It is in the person of this Norman chief that we may seek for the coolest policy and ambition, with a small allay of religious fanaticism. His conduct may justify a belief that he had secretly directed the design of the pope, which he affected to second with astonishment and zeal: at the siege of Amalphi, his example and discourse inflamed the passions of a confederate army; he instantly tore his garment to supply crosses for the numerous candidates, and prepared to visit Constantinople and Asia at the head of ten thousand horse and twenty thousand foot. Several princes of the Norman race accompanied this veteran general; and his cousin Tancred 53 was the partner, rather than the servant, of the war.
In the accomplished character of Tancred we discover all the virtues of a perfect knight, 54 the true spirit of chivalry, which inspired the generous sentiments and social offices of man far better than the base philosophy, or the baser religion, of the times.
42 (return)
[ 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.)]
43 (return)
[ 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 into
that of Brabant, (Vales. Notit. Gall. p. 283-288.)]
44 (return)
[ See, in the Description of France, by the Abbe 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.]
45 (return)
[ 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.)]
46 (return)
[ Anna Comnena supposes, that Hugh was proud of his nobility
riches, and power, (l. x. p. 288: ) the two last articles appear more
equivocal; but an item, which seven hundred years ago was famous in the
palace of Constantinople, attests the ancient dignity of the Capetian
family of France.]
47 (return)
[ Will. Gemeticensis, l. vii. c. 7, p. 672, 673, in Camden.
Normani cis. He pawned the duchy for one hundredth part of the present
yearly revenue. Ten thousand marks may be equal to five hundred thousand
livres, and Normandy annually yields fifty-seven millions to the king,
(Necker, Administration des Finances, tom. i. p. 287.)]
48 (return)
[ His original letter to his wife is inserted in the
Spicilegium of Dom. Luc. d'Acheri, tom. iv. and quoted in the Esprit des
Croisades tom. i. p. 63.]
49 (return)
[ Unius enim duum, trium seu quatuor oppidorum dominos quis
numeret? quorum tanta fuit copia, ut non vix totidem Trojana obsidio
coegisse putetur. (Ever the lively and interesting Guibert, p. 486.)]
50 (return)
[ It is singular enough, that Raymond of St. Giles, a second
character in the genuine history of the crusades, should shine as the
first of heroes in the writings of the Greeks (Anna Comnen. Alexiad, l.
x xi.) and the Arabians, (Longueruana, p. 129.)]
51 (return)
[ Omnes de Burgundia, et Alvernia, et Vasconia, et Gothi,
(of Languedoc,) provinciales appellabantur, caeteri vero Francigenae
et hoc in exercitu; inter hostes autem Franci dicebantur. Raymond des
Agiles, p. 144.]
52 (return)
[ The town of his birth, or first appanage, was consecrated
to St Aegidius, whose name, as early as the first crusade, was corrupted
by the French into St. Gilles, or St. Giles. It is situate in the Iowen
Languedoc, between Nismes and the Rhone, and still boasts a collegiate
church of the foundation of Raymond, (Melanges tires d'une Grande
Bibliotheque, tom. xxxvii. p 51.)]
53 (return)
[ The mother of Tancred was Emma, sister of the great Robert
Guiscard; his father, the Marquis Odo the Good. It is singular enough,
that the family and country of so illustrious a person should be
unknown; but Muratori reasonably conjectures that he was an Italian, and
perhaps of the race of the marquises of Montferrat in Piedmont, (Script.
tom. v. p. 281, 282.)]
54 (return)
[ To gratify the childish vanity of the house of Este. Tasso
has inserted in his poem, and in the first crusade, a fabulous hero,
the brave and amorous Rinaldo, (x. 75, xvii. 66-94.) He might borrow his
name from a Rinaldo, with the Aquila bianca Estense, who vanquished,
as the standard-bearer of the Roman church, the emperor Frederic I.,
(Storia Imperiale di Ricobaldo, in Muratori Script. Ital. tom. ix. p.
360. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, iii. 30.) But, 1. The distance of sixty
years between the youth of the two Rinaldos destroys their identity. 2.
The Storia Imperiale is a forgery of the Conte Boyardo, at the end of
the xvth century, (Muratori, p. 281-289.) 3. This Rinaldo, and his
exploits, are not less chimerical than the hero of Tasso, (Muratori,
Antichita Estense, tom. i. p. 350.)]
Between the age of Charlemagne and that of the crusades, a revolution had taken place among the Spaniards, the Normans, and the French, which was gradually extended to the rest of Europe. The service of the infantry was degraded to the plebeians; the cavalry formed the strength of the armies, and the honorable name of miles, or soldier, was confined to the gentlemen 55 who served on horseback, and were invested with the character of knighthood. The dukes and counts, who had usurped the rights of sovereignty, divided the provinces among their faithful barons: the barons distributed among their vassals the fiefs or benefices of their jurisdiction; and these military tenants, the peers of each other and of their lord, composed the noble or equestrian order, which disdained to conceive the peasant or burgher as of the same species with themselves. The dignity of their birth was preserved by pure and equal alliances; their sons alone, who could produce four quarters or lines of ancestry without spot or reproach, might legally pretend to the honor of knighthood; but a valiant plebeian was sometimes enriched and ennobled by the sword, and became the father of a new race. A single knight could impart, according to his judgment, the character which he received; and the warlike sovereigns of Europe derived more glory from this personal distinction than from the lustre of their diadem. This ceremony, of which some traces may be found in Tacitus and the woods of Germany, 56 was in its origin simple and profane; the candidate, after some previous trial, was invested with the sword and spurs; and his cheek or shoulder was touched with a slight blow, as an emblem of the last affront which it was lawful for him to endure. But superstition mingled in every public and private action of life: in the holy wars, it sanctified the profession of arms; and the order of chivalry was assimilated in its rights and privileges to the sacred orders of priesthood. The bath and white garment of the novice were an indecent copy of the regeneration of baptism: his sword, which he offered on the altar, was blessed by the ministers of religion: his solemn reception was preceded by fasts and vigils; and he was created a knight in the name of God, of St. George, and of St. Michael the archangel. He swore to accomplish the duties of his profession; and education, example, and the public opinion, were the inviolable guardians of his oath. As the champion of God and the ladies, (I blush to unite such discordant names,) he devoted himself to speak the truth; to maintain the right; to protect the distressed; to practise courtesy, a virtue less familiar to the ancients; to pursue the infidels; to despise the allurements of ease and safety; and to vindicate in every perilous adventure the honor of his character. The abuse of the same spirit provoked the illiterate knight to disdain the arts of industry and peace; to esteem himself the sole judge and avenger of his own injuries; and proudly to neglect the laws of civil society and military discipline. Yet the benefits of this institution, to refine the temper of Barbarians, and to infuse some principles of faith, justice, and humanity, were strongly felt, and have been often observed. The asperity of national prejudice was softened; and the community of religion and arms spread a similar color and generous emulation over the face of Christendom. Abroad in enterprise and pilgrimage, at home in martial exercise, the warriors of every country were perpetually associated; and impartial taste must prefer a Gothic tournament to the Olympic games of classic antiquity. 57 Instead of the naked spectacles which corrupted the manners of the Greeks, and banished from the stadium the virgins and matrons, the pompous decoration of the lists was crowned with the presence of chaste and high-born beauty, from whose hands the conqueror received the prize of his dexterity and courage. The skill and strength that were exerted in wrestling and boxing bear a distant and doubtful relation to the merit of a soldier; but the tournaments, as they were invented in France, and eagerly adopted both in the East and West, presented a lively image of the business of the field. The single combats, the general skirmish, the defence of a pass, or castle, were rehearsed as in actual service; and the contest, both in real and mimic war, was decided by the superior management of the horse and lance. The lance was the proper and peculiar weapon of the knight: his horse was of a large and heavy breed; but this charger, till he was roused by the approaching danger, was usually led by an attendant, and he quietly rode a pad or palfrey of a more easy pace. His helmet and sword, his greaves and buckler, it would be superfluous to describe; but I may remark, that, at the period of the crusades, the armor was less ponderous than in later times; and that, instead of a massy cuirass, his breast was defended by a hauberk or coat of mail. When their long lances were fixed in the rest, the warriors furiously spurred their horses against the foe; and the light cavalry of the Turks and Arabs could seldom stand against the direct and impetuous weight of their charge. Each knight was attended to the field by his faithful squire, a youth of equal birth and similar hopes; he was followed by his archers and men at arms, and four, or five, or six soldiers were computed as the furniture of a complete lance. In the expeditions to the neighboring kingdoms or the Holy Land, the duties of the feudal tenure no longer subsisted; the voluntary service of the knights and their followers were either prompted by zeal or attachment, or purchased with rewards and promises; and the numbers of each squadron were measured by the power, the wealth, and the fame, of each independent chieftain. They were distinguished by his banner, his armorial coat, and his cry of war; and the most ancient families of Europe must seek in these achievements the origin and proof of their nobility. In this rapid portrait of chivalry I have been urged to anticipate on the story of the crusades, at once an effect and a cause, of this memorable institution. 58
55 (return)
[ Of the words gentilis, gentilhomme, gentleman, two
etymologies are produced: 1. From the Barbarians of the fifth century,
the soldiers, and at length the conquerors of the Roman empire, who were
vain of their foreign nobility; and 2. From the sense of the civilians,
who consider gentilis as synonymous with ingenuus. Selden inclines to
the first but the latter is more pure, as well as probable.]
56 (return)
[ Framea scutoque juvenem ornant. Tacitus, Germania. c. 13.]
57 (return)
[ The athletic exercises, particularly the caestus and
pancratium, were condemned by Lycurgus, Philopoemen, and Galen, a
lawgiver, a general, and a physician. Against their authority and
reasons, the reader may weigh the apology of Lucian, in the character of
Solon. See West on the Olympic Games, in his Pindar, vol. ii. p. 86-96
243-248]
58 (return)
[ On the curious subjects of knighthood, knights-service,
nobility, arms, cry of war, banners, and tournaments, an ample fund of
information may be sought in Selden, (Opera, tom. iii. part i. Titles
of Honor, part ii. c. 1, 3, 5, 8,) Ducange, (Gloss. Latin. tom. iv. p.
398-412, &c.,) Dissertations sur Joinville, (i. vi.—xii. p. 127-142,
p. 161-222,) and M. de St. Palaye, (Memoires sur la Chevalerie.)]
Such were the troops, and such the leaders, who assumed the cross for the deliverance of the holy sepulchre. As soon as they were relieved by the absence of the plebeian multitude, they encouraged each other, by interviews and messages, to accomplish their vow, and hasten their departure. Their wives and sisters were desirous of partaking the danger and merit of the pilgrimage: their portable treasures were conveyed in bars of silver and gold; and the princes and barons were attended by their equipage of hounds and hawks to amuse their leisure and to supply their table. The difficulty of procuring subsistence for so many myriads of men and horses engaged them to separate their forces: their choice or situation determined the road; and it was agreed to meet in the neighborhood of Constantinople, and from thence to begin their operations against the Turks. From the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle, Godfrey of Bouillon followed the direct way of Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria; and, as long as he exercised the sole command every step afforded some proof of his prudence and virtue. On the confines of Hungary he was stopped three weeks by a Christian people, to whom the name, or at least the abuse, of the cross was justly odious. The Hungarians still smarted with the wounds which they had received from the first pilgrims: in their turn they had abused the right of defence and retaliation; and they had reason to apprehend a severe revenge from a hero of the same nation, and who was engaged in the same cause. But, after weighing the motives and the events, the virtuous duke was content to pity the crimes and misfortunes of his worthless brethren; and his twelve deputies, the messengers of peace, requested in his name a free passage and an equal market. To remove their suspicions, Godfrey trusted himself, and afterwards his brother, to the faith of Carloman, 581 king of Hungary, who treated them with a simple but hospitable entertainment: the treaty was sanctified by their common gospel; and a proclamation, under pain of death, restrained the animosity and license of the Latin soldiers. From Austria to Belgrade, they traversed the plains of Hungary, without enduring or offering an injury; and the proximity of Carloman, who hovered on their flanks with his numerous cavalry, was a precaution not less useful for their safety than for his own. They reached the banks of the Save; and no sooner had they passed the river, than the king of Hungary restored the hostages, and saluted their departure with the fairest wishes for the success of their enterprise. With the same conduct and discipline, Godfrey pervaded the woods of Bulgaria and the frontiers of Thrace; and might congratulate himself that he had almost reached the first term of his pilgrimage, without drawing his sword against a Christian adversary. After an easy and pleasant journey through Lombardy, from Turin to Aquileia, Raymond and his provincials marched forty days through the savage country of Dalmatia 59 and Sclavonia. The weather was a perpetual fog; the land was mountainous and desolate; the natives were either fugitive or hostile: loose in their religion and government, they refused to furnish provisions or guides; murdered the stragglers; and exercised by night and day the vigilance of the count, who derived more security from the punishment of some captive robbers than from his interview and treaty with the prince of Scodra. 60 His march between Durazzo and Constantinople was harassed, without being stopped, by the peasants and soldiers of the Greek emperor; and the same faint and ambiguous hostility was prepared for the remaining chiefs, who passed the Adriatic from the coast of Italy. Bohemond had arms and vessels, and foresight and discipline; and his name was not forgotten in the provinces of Epirus and Thessaly. Whatever obstacles he encountered were surmounted by his military conduct and the valor of Tancred; and if the Norman prince affected to spare the Greeks, he gorged his soldiers with the full plunder of an heretical castle. 61 The nobles of France pressed forwards with the vain and thoughtless ardor of which their nation has been sometimes accused. From the Alps to Apulia the march of Hugh the Great, of the two Roberts, and of Stephen of Chartres, through a wealthy country, and amidst the applauding Catholics, was a devout or triumphant progress: they kissed the feet of the Roman pontiff; and the golden standard of St. Peter was delivered to the brother of the French monarch. 62 But in this visit of piety and pleasure, they neglected to secure the season, and the means of their embarkation: the winter was insensibly lost: their troops were scattered and corrupted in the towns of Italy. They separately accomplished their passage, regardless of safety or dignity; and within nine months from the feast of the Assumption, the day appointed by Urban, all the Latin princes had reached Constantinople. But the count of Vermandois was produced as a captive; his foremost vessels were scattered by a tempest; and his person, against the law of nations, was detained by the lieutenants of Alexius. Yet the arrival of Hugh had been announced by four-and-twenty knights in golden armor, who commanded the emperor to revere the general of the Latin Christians, the brother of the king of kings. 63 631
581 (return)
[ Carloman (or Calmany) demanded the brother of Godfrey as
hostage but Count Baldwin refused the humiliating submission. Godfrey
shamed him into this sacrifice for the common good by offering to
surrender himself Wilken, vol. i. p. 104.—M.]
59 (return)
[ The Familiae Dalmaticae of Ducange are meagre and
imperfect; the national historians are recent and fabulous, the Greeks
remote and careless. In the year 1104 Coloman reduced the maritine
country as far as Trau and Saloma, (Katona, Hist. Crit. tom. iii. p.
195-207.)]
60 (return)
[ Scodras appears in Livy as the capital and fortress of
Gentius, king of the Illyrians, arx munitissima, afterwards a Roman
colony, (Cellarius, tom. i. p. 393, 394.) It is now called Iscodar, or
Scutari, (D'Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. i. p. 164.) The sanjiak
(now a pacha) of Scutari, or Schendeire, was the viiith under the
Beglerbeg of Romania, and furnished 600 soldiers on a revenue of 78,787
rix dollars, (Marsigli, Stato Militare del Imperio Ottomano, p. 128.)]
61 (return)
[ In Pelagonia castrum haereticum..... spoliatum cum suis
habi tatoribus igne combussere. Nec id eis injuria contigit: quia
illorum detestabilis sermo et cancer serpebat, jamque circumjacentes
regiones suo pravo dogmate foedaverat, (Robert. Mon. p. 36, 37.) After
cooly relating the fact, the Archbishop Baldric adds, as a praise, Omnes
siquidem illi viatores, Judeos, haereticos, Saracenos aequaliter habent
exosos; quos omnes appellant inimicos Dei, (p. 92.)]
62 (return)
[ (Alexiad. l. x. p. 288.)]
63 (return)
[ This Oriental pomp is extravagant in a count of
Vermandois; but the patriot Ducange repeats with much complacency (Not.
ad Alexiad. p. 352, 353. Dissert. xxvii. sur Joinville, p. 315) the
passages of Matthew Paris (A.D. 1254) and Froissard, (vol. iv. p. 201,)
which style the king of France rex regum, and chef de tous les rois
Chretiens.]
631 (return)
[ Hugh was taken at Durazzo, and sent by land to
Constantinople Wilken—M.]
In some oriental tale I have read the fable of a shepherd, who was ruined by the accomplishment of his own wishes: he had prayed for water; the Ganges was turned into his grounds, and his flock and cottage were swept away by the inundation. Such was the fortune, or at least the apprehension of the Greek emperor Alexius Comnenus, whose name has already appeared in this history, and whose conduct is so differently represented by his daughter Anne, 64 and by the Latin writers. 65 In the council of Placentia, his ambassadors had solicited a moderate succor, perhaps of ten thousand soldiers, but he was astonished by the approach of so many potent chiefs and fanatic nations. The emperor fluctuated between hope and fear, between timidity and courage; but in the crooked policy which he mistook for wisdom, I cannot believe, I cannot discern, that he maliciously conspired against the life or honor of the French heroes. The promiscuous multitudes of Peter the Hermit were savage beasts, alike destitute of humanity and reason: nor was it possible for Alexius to prevent or deplore their destruction. The troops of Godfrey and his peers were less contemptible, but not less suspicious, to the Greek emperor. Their motives might be pure and pious: but he was equally alarmed by his knowledge of the ambitious Bohemond, 651 and his ignorance of the Transalpine chiefs: the courage of the French was blind and headstrong; they might be tempted by the luxury and wealth of Greece, and elated by the view and opinion of their invincible strength: and Jerusalem might be forgotten in the prospect of Constantinople. After a long march and painful abstinence, the troops of Godfrey encamped in the plains of Thrace; they heard with indignation, that their brother, the count of Vermandois, was imprisoned by the Greeks; and their reluctant duke was compelled to indulge them in some freedom of retaliation and rapine. They were appeased by the submission of Alexius: he promised to supply their camp; and as they refused, in the midst of winter, to pass the Bosphorus, their quarters were assigned among the gardens and palaces on the shores of that narrow sea. But an incurable jealousy still rankled in the minds of the two nations, who despised each other as slaves and Barbarians. Ignorance is the ground of suspicion, and suspicion was inflamed into daily provocations: prejudice is blind, hunger is deaf; and Alexius is accused of a design to starve or assault the Latins in a dangerous post, on all sides encompassed with the waters. 66 Godfrey sounded his trumpets, burst the net, overspread the plain, and insulted the suburbs; but the gates of Constantinople were strongly fortified; the ramparts were lined with archers; and, after a doubtful conflict, both parties listened to the voice of peace and religion. The gifts and promises of the emperor insensibly soothed the fierce spirit of the western strangers; as a Christian warrior, he rekindled their zeal for the prosecution of their holy enterprise, which he engaged to second with his troops and treasures. On the return of spring, Godfrey was persuaded to occupy a pleasant and plentiful camp in Asia; and no sooner had he passed the Bosphorus, than the Greek vessels were suddenly recalled to the opposite shore. The same policy was repeated with the succeeding chiefs, who were swayed by the example, and weakened by the departure, of their foremost companions. By his skill and diligence, Alexius prevented the union of any two of the confederate armies at the same moment under the walls of Constantinople; and before the feast of the Pentecost not a Latin pilgrim was left on the coast of Europe.
64 (return)
[ Anna Comnena was born the 1st of December, A.D. 1083,
indiction vii., (Alexiad. l. vi. p. 166, 167.) At thirteen, the time of
the first crusade, she was nubile, and perhaps married to the younger
Nicephorus Bryennius, whom she fondly styles, (l. x. p. 295, 296.) Some
moderns have imagined, that her enmity to Bohemond was the fruit of
disappointed love. In the transactions of Constantinople and Nice, her
partial accounts (Alex. l. x. xi. p. 283-317) may be opposed to the
partiality of the Latins, but in their subsequent exploits she is brief
and ignorant.]
65 (return)
[ In their views of the character and conduct of Alexius,
Maimbourg has favored the Catholic Franks, and Voltaire has been
partial to the schismatic Greeks. The prejudice of a philosopher is less
excusable than that of a Jesuit.]
651 (return)
[ Wilken quotes a remarkable passage of William of
Malmsbury as to the secret motives of Urban and of Bohemond in urging
the crusade. Illud repositius propositum non ita vulgabatur, quod
Boemundi consilio, pene totam Europam in Asiaticam expeditionem moveret,
ut in tanto tumultu omnium provinciarum facile obaeratis auxiliaribus,
et Urbanus Romam et Boemundus Illyricum et Macedoniam pervaderent. Nam
eas terras et quidquid praeterea a Dyrrachio usque ad Thessalonicam
protenditur, Guiscardus pater, super Alexium acquisierat; ideirco illas
Boemundus suo juri competere clamitabat: inops haereditatis Apuliae,
quam genitor Rogerio, minori filio delegaverat. Wilken, vol. ii. p.
313.—M]
66 (return)
[ Between the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, and the River
Barbyses, which is deep in summer, and runs fifteen miles through a flat
meadow. Its communication with Europe and Constantinople is by the
stone bridge of the Blachernoe, which in successive ages was restored by
Justinian and Basil, (Gyllius de Bosphoro Thracio, l. ii. c. 3. Ducange
O. P. Christiana, l. v. c. 2, p, 179.)]
The same arms which threatened Europe might deliver Asia, and repel the Turks from the neighboring shores of the Bosphorus and Hellespont. The fair provinces from Nice to Antioch were the recent patrimony of the Roman emperor; and his ancient and perpetual claim still embraced the kingdoms of Syria and Egypt. In his enthusiasm, Alexius indulged, or affected, the ambitious hope of leading his new allies to subvert the thrones of the East; but the calmer dictates of reason and temper dissuaded him from exposing his royal person to the faith of unknown and lawless Barbarians. His prudence, or his pride, was content with extorting from the French princes an oath of homage and fidelity, and a solemn promise, that they
would either restore, or hold, their Asiatic conquests as the humble and loyal vassals of the Roman empire. Their independent spirit was fired at the mention of this foreign and voluntary servitude: they successively yielded to the dexterous application of gifts and flattery; and the first proselytes became the most eloquent and effectual missionaries to multiply the companions of their shame. The pride of Hugh of Vermandois was soothed by the honors of his captivity; and in the brother of the French king, the example of submission was prevalent and weighty. In the mind of Godfrey of Bouillon every human consideration was subordinate to the glory of God and the success of the crusade. He had firmly resisted the temptations of Bohemond and Raymond, who urged the attack and conquest of Constantinople. Alexius esteemed his virtues, deservedly named him the champion of the empire, and dignified his homage with the filial name and the rights of adoption. 67 The hateful Bohemond was received as a true and ancient ally; and if the emperor reminded him of former hostilities, it was only to praise the valor that he had displayed, and the glory that he had acquired, in the fields of Durazzo and Larissa. The son of Guiscard was lodged and entertained, and served with Imperial pomp: one day, as he passed through the gallery of the palace, a door was carelessly left open to expose a pile of gold and silver, of silk and gems, of curious and costly furniture, that was heaped, in seeming disorder, from the floor to the roof of the chamber. "What conquests," exclaimed the ambitious miser, "might not be achieved by the possession of such a treasure!"—"It is your own," replied a Greek attendant, who watched the motions of his soul; and Bohemond, after some hesitation, condescended to accept this magnificent present. The Norman was flattered by the assurance of an independent principality; and Alexius eluded, rather than denied, his daring demand of the office of great domestic, or general of the East. The two Roberts, the son of the conqueror of England, and the kinsmen of three queens, 68 bowed in their turn before the Byzantine throne. A private letter of Stephen of Chartres attests his admiration of the emperor, the most excellent and liberal of men, who taught him to believe that he was a favorite, and promised to educate and establish his youngest son. In his southern province, the count of St. Giles and Thoulouse faintly recognized the supremacy of the king of France, a prince of a foreign nation and language. At the head of a hundred thousand men, he declared that he was the soldier and servant of Christ alone, and that the Greek might be satisfied with an equal treaty of alliance and friendship. His obstinate resistance enhanced the value and the price of his submission; and he shone, says the princess Anne, among the Barbarians, as the sun amidst the stars of heaven. His disgust of the noise and insolence of the French, his suspicions of the designs of Bohemond, the emperor imparted to his faithful Raymond; and that aged statesman might clearly discern, that however false in friendship, he was sincere in his enmity. 69 The spirit of chivalry was last subdued in the person of Tancred; and none could deem themselves dishonored by the imitation of that gallant knight. He disdained the gold and flattery of the Greek monarch; assaulted in his presence an insolent patrician; escaped to Asia in the habit of a private soldier; and yielded with a sigh to the authority of Bohemond, and the interest of the Christian cause. The best and most ostensible reason was the impossibility of passing the sea and accomplishing their vow, without the license and the vessels of Alexius; but they cherished a secret hope, that as soon as they trod the continent of Asia, their swords would obliterate their shame, and dissolve the engagement, which on his side might not be very faithfully performed. The ceremony of their homage was grateful to a people who had long since considered pride as the substitute of power. High on his throne, the emperor sat mute and immovable: his majesty was adored by the Latin princes; and they submitted to kiss either his feet or his knees, an indignity which their own writers are ashamed to confess and unable to deny. 70
67 (return)
[ There are two sorts of adoption, the one by arms, the
other by introducing the son between the shirt and skin of his father.
Ducange isur Joinville, (Diss. xxii. p. 270) supposes Godfrey's adoption
to have been of the latter sort.]
68 (return)
[ After his return, Robert of Flanders became the man of the
king of England, for a pension of four hundred marks. See the first act
in Rymer's Foedera.]
69 (return)
[ Sensit vetus regnandi, falsos in amore, odia non fingere.
Tacit. vi. 44.]
70 (return)
[ The proud historians of the crusades slide and stumble
over this humiliating step. Yet, since the heroes knelt to salute the
emperor, as he sat motionless on his throne, it is clear that they must
have kissed either his feet or knees. It is only singular, that Anna
should not have amply supplied the silence or ambiguity of the Latins.
The abasement of their princes would have added a fine chapter to the
Ceremoniale Aulae Byzantinae.]
Private or public interest suppressed the murmurs of the dukes and counts; but a French baron (he is supposed to be Robert of Paris 71 presumed to ascend the throne, and to place himself by the side of Alexius. The sage reproof of Baldwin provoked him to exclaim, in his barbarous idiom, "Who is this rustic, that keeps his seat, while so many valiant captains are standing round him?" The emperor maintained his silence, dissembled his indignation, and questioned his interpreter concerning the meaning of the words, which he partly suspected from the universal language of gesture and countenance. Before the departure of the pilgrims, he endeavored to learn the name and condition of the audacious baron. "I am a Frenchman," replied Robert, "of the purest and most ancient nobility of my country. All that I know is, that there is a church in my neighborhood, 72 the resort of those who are desirous of approving their valor in single combat. Till an enemy appears, they address their prayers to God and his saints. That church I have frequently visited. But never have I found an antagonist who dared to accept my defiance." Alexius dismissed the challenger with some prudent advice for his conduct in the Turkish warfare; and history repeats with pleasure this lively example of the manners of his age and country.
71 (return)
[ He called himself (see Alexias, l. x. p. 301.) What a
title of noblesse of the eleventh century, if any one could now prove
his inheritance! Anna relates, with visible pleasure, that the swelling
Barbarian, was killed, or wounded, after fighting in the front in the
battle of Dorylaeum, (l. xi. p. 317.) This circumstance may justify the
suspicion of Ducange, (Not. p. 362,) that he was no other than Robert
of Paris, of the district most peculiarly styled the Duchy or Island of
France, (L'Isle de France.)]
72 (return)
[ With the same penetration, Ducange discovers his church to
be that of St. Drausus, or Drosin, of Soissons, quem duello dimicaturi
solent invocare: pugiles qui ad memoriam ejus (his tomb) pernoctant
invictos reddit, ut et de Burgundia et Italia tali necessitate
confugiatur ad eum. Joan. Sariberiensis, epist. 139.]
The conquest of Asia was undertaken and achieved by Alexander, with thirty-five thousand Macedonians and Greeks; 73 and his best hope was in the strength and discipline of his phalanx of infantry. The principal force of the crusaders consisted in their cavalry; and when that force was mustered in the plains of Bithynia, the knights and their martial attendants on horseback amounted to one hundred thousand fighting men, completely armed with the helmet and coat of mail. The value of these soldiers deserved a strict and authentic account; and the flower of European chivalry might furnish, in a first effort, this formidable body of heavy horse. A part of the infantry might be enrolled for the service of scouts, pioneers, and archers; but the promiscuous crowd were lost in their own disorder; and we depend not on the eyes and knowledge, but on the belief and fancy, of a chaplain of Count Baldwin, 74 in the estimate of six hundred thousand pilgrims able to bear arms, besides the priests and monks, the women and children of the Latin camp. The reader starts; and before he is recovered from his surprise, I shall add, on the same testimony, that if all who took the cross had accomplished their vow, above six millions would have migrated from Europe to Asia. Under this oppression of faith, I derive some relief from a more sagacious and thinking writer, 75 who, after the same review of the cavalry, accuses the credulity of the priest of Chartres, and even doubts whether the Cisalpine regions (in the geography of a Frenchman) were sufficient to produce and pour forth such incredible multitudes. The coolest scepticism will remember, that of these religious volunteers great numbers never beheld Constantinople and Nice. Of enthusiasm the influence is irregular and transient: many were detained at home by reason or cowardice, by poverty or weakness; and many were repulsed by the obstacles of the way, the more insuperable as they were unforeseen, to these ignorant fanatics. The savage countries of Hungary and Bulgaria were whitened with their bones: their vanguard was cut in pieces by the Turkish sultan; and the loss of the first adventure, by the sword, or climate, or fatigue, has already been stated at three hundred thousand men. Yet the myriads that survived, that marched, that pressed forwards on the holy pilgrimage, were a subject of astonishment to themselves and to the Greeks. The copious energy of her language sinks under the efforts of the princess Anne: 76 the images of locusts, of leaves and flowers, of the sands of the sea, or the stars of heaven, imperfectly represent what she had seen and heard; and the daughter of Alexius exclaims, that Europe was loosened from its foundations, and hurled against Asia. The ancient hosts of Darius and Xerxes labor under the same doubt of a vague and indefinite magnitude; but I am inclined to believe, that a larger number has never been contained within the lines of a single camp, than at the siege of Nice, the first operation of the Latin princes. Their motives, their characters, and their arms, have been already displayed. Of their troops the most numerous portion were natives of France: the Low Countries, the banks of the Rhine, and Apulia, sent a powerful reenforcement: some bands of adventurers were drawn from Spain, Lombardy, and England; 77 and from the distant bogs and mountains of Ireland or Scotland 78 issued some naked and savage fanatics, ferocious at home but unwarlike abroad. Had not superstition condemned the sacrilegious prudence of depriving the poorest or weakest Christian 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 secured the way of the Lord. A small remnant of the pilgrims, who passed the Bosphorus, was permitted to visit the holy sepulchre. Their northern constitution was scorched by the rays, and infected by the vapors, of a Syrian sun. They consumed, with heedless prodigality, their stores of water and provision: their numbers exhausted the inland country: the sea was remote, the Greeks were unfriendly, and the Christians of every sect fled before the voracious and cruel rapine of their brethren. In the dire necessity of famine, they sometimes roasted and devoured the flesh of their infant or adult captives. Among the Turks and Saracens, the idolaters of Europe were rendered more odious by the name and reputation of Cannibals; the spies, who introduced themselves into the kitchen of Bohemond, were shown several human bodies turning on the spit: and the artful Norman encouraged a report, which increased at the same time the abhorrence and the terror of the infidels. 79
73 (return)
[ There is some diversity on the numbers of his army; but
no authority can be compared with that of Ptolemy, who states it at five
thousand horse and thirty thousand foot, (see Usher's Annales, p 152.)]
74 (return)
[ Fulcher. Carnotensis, p. 387. He enumerates nineteen
nations of different names and languages, (p. 389;) but I do not clearly
apprehend his difference between the Franci and Galli, Itali and Apuli.
Elsewhere (p. 385) he contemptuously brands the deserters.]
75 (return)
[ Guibert, p. 556. Yet even his gentle opposition implies an
immense multitude. By Urban II., in the fervor of his zeal, it is only
rated at 300,000 pilgrims, (epist. xvi. Concil. tom. xii. p. 731.)]
76 (return)
[ Alexias, l. x. p. 283, 305. Her fastidious delicacy
complains of their strange and inarticulate names; and indeed there
is scarcely one that she has not contrived to disfigure with the proud
ignorance so dear and familiar to a polished people. I shall select only
one example, Sangeles, for the count of St. Giles.]
77 (return)
[ William of Malmsbury (who wrote about the year 1130) has
inserted in his history (l. iv. p. 130-154) a narrative of the first
crusade: but I wish that, instead of listening to the tenue murmur which
had passed 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 Holdernesse, led
the rear-guard with Duke Robert, at the battle of Antioch, (Baronage,
part i. p. 61.)]
78 (return)
[ Videres Scotorum apud se ferocium alias imbellium cuneos,
(Guibert, p. 471;) the crus intectum and hispida chlamys, may suit the
Highlanders; but the finibus uliginosis may rather apply to the Irish
bogs. William of Malmsbury expressly mentions the Welsh and Scots,
&c., (l. iv. p. 133,) who quitted, the former venatiorem, the latter
familiaritatem pulicum.]
79 (return)
[ This cannibal hunger, sometimes real, more frequently
an artifice or a lie, may be found in Anna Comnena, (Alexias, l. x.
p. 288,) Guibert, (p. 546,) Radulph. Cadom., (c. 97.) The stratagem is
related by the author of the Gesta Francorum, the monk Robert Baldric,
and Raymond des Agiles, in the siege and famine of Antioch.]
I have expiated with pleasure on the first steps of the crusaders, as they paint the manners and character of Europe: but I shall abridge the tedious and uniform narrative of their blind achievements, which were performed by strength and are described by ignorance. From their first station in the neighborhood of Nicomedia, they advanced in successive divisions; passed the contracted limit of the Greek empire; opened a road through the hills, and commenced, by the siege of his capital, their pious warfare against the Turkish sultan. His kingdom of Roum extended from the Hellespont to the confines of Syria, and barred the pilgrimage of Jerusalem, his name was Kilidge-Arslan, or Soliman, 80 of the race of Seljuk, and son of the first conqueror; and in the defence of a land which the Turks considered as their own, he deserved the praise of his enemies, by whom alone he is known to posterity. Yielding to the first impulse of the torrent, he deposited his family and treasure in Nice; retired to the mountains with fifty thousand horse; and twice descended to assault the camps or quarters of the Christian besiegers, which formed an imperfect circle of above six miles. The lofty and solid walls of Nice were covered by a deep ditch, and flanked by three hundred and seventy towers; and on the verge of Christendom, the Moslems were trained in arms, and inflamed by religion. Before this city, the French princes occupied their stations, and prosecuted their attacks without correspondence or subordination: emulation prompted their valor; but their valor was sullied by cruelty, and their emulation degenerated into envy and civil discord. In the siege of Nice, the arts and engines of antiquity were employed by the Latins; the mine and the battering-ram, the tortoise, and the belfrey or movable turret, artificial fire, and the catapult and balist, the sling, and the crossbow for the casting of stones and darts. 81 In the space of seven weeks much labor and blood were expended, and some progress, especially by Count Raymond, was made on the side of the besiegers. But the Turks could protract their resistance and secure their escape, as long as they were masters of the Lake 82 Ascanius, which stretches several miles to the westward of the city. The means of conquest were supplied by the prudence and industry of Alexius; a great number of boats was transported on sledges from the sea to the lake; they were filled with the most dexterous of his archers; the flight of the sultana was intercepted; Nice was invested by land and water; and a Greek emissary persuaded the inhabitants to accept his master's protection, and to save themselves, by a timely surrender, from the rage of the savages of Europe. In the moment of victory, or at least of hope, the crusaders, thirsting for blood and plunder, were awed by the Imperial banner that streamed from the citadel; 821 and Alexius guarded with jealous vigilance this important conquest. The murmurs of the chiefs were stifled by honor or interest; and after a halt of nine days, they directed their march towards Phrygia under the guidance of a Greek general, whom they suspected of a secret connivance with the sultan. The consort and the principal servants of Soliman had been honorably restored without ransom; and the emperor's generosity to the miscreants 83 was interpreted as treason to the Christian cause.
80 (return)
[ His Mussulman appellation of Soliman is used by the
Latins, and his character is highly embellished by Tasso. His Turkish
name of Kilidge-Arslan (A. H. 485-500, A.D. 1192-1206. See De Guignes's
Tables, tom. i. p. 245) is employed by the Orientals, and with some
corruption by the Greeks; but little more than his name can be found in
the Mahometan writers, who are dry and sulky on the subject of the first
crusade, (De Guignes, tom. iii. p. ii. p. 10-30.) * Note: See note,
page 556. Soliman and Kilidge-Arslan were father and son—M.]
81 (return)
[ On the fortifications, engines, and sieges of the middle
ages, see Muratori, (Antiquitat. Italiae, tom. ii. dissert. xxvi. p.
452-524.) The belfredus, from whence our belfrey, was the movable tower
of the ancients, (Ducange, tom. i. p. 608.)]
82 (return)
[ I cannot forbear remarking the resemblance between the
siege and lake of Nice, with the operations of Hernan Cortez before
Mexico. See Dr. Robertson, History of America, l. v.]
821 (return)
[ See Anna Comnena.—M.]
83 (return)
[ Mecreant, a word invented by the French crusaders, and
confined in that language to its primitive sense. It should seem, that
the zeal of our ancestors boiled higher, and that they branded every
unbeliever as a rascal. A similar prejudice still lurks in the minds of
many who think themselves Christians.]
Soliman was rather provoked than dismayed by the loss of his capital: he admonished his subjects and allies of this strange invasion of the Western Barbarians; the Turkish emirs obeyed the call of loyalty or religion; the Turkman hordes encamped round his standard; and his whole force is loosely stated by the Christians at two hundred, or even three hundred and sixty thousand horse. Yet he patiently waited till they had left behind them the sea and the Greek frontier; and hovering on the flanks, observed their careless and confident progress in two columns beyond the view of each other. Some miles before they could reach Dorylaeum in Phrygia, the left, and least numerous, division was surprised, and attacked, and almost oppressed, by the Turkish cavalry. 84 The heat of the weather, the clouds of arrows, and the barbarous onset, overwhelmed the crusaders; they lost their order and confidence, and the fainting fight was sustained by the personal valor, rather than by the military conduct, of Bohemond, Tancred, and Robert of Normandy. They were revived by the welcome banners of Duke Godfrey, who flew to their succor, with the count of Vermandois, and sixty thousand horse; and was followed by Raymond of Tholouse, the bishop of Puy, and the remainder of the sacred army. Without a moment's pause, they formed in new order, and advanced to a second battle. They were received with equal resolution; and, in their common disdain for the unwarlike people of Greece and Asia, it was confessed on both sides, that the Turks and the Franks were the only nations entitled to the appellation of soldiers. 85 Their encounter was varied, and balanced by the contrast of arms and discipline; of the direct charge, and wheeling evolutions; of the couched lance, and the brandished javelin; of a weighty broadsword, and a crooked sabre; of cumbrous armor, and thin flowing robes; and of the long Tartar bow, and the arbalist or crossbow, a deadly weapon, yet unknown to the Orientals. 86 As long as the horses were fresh, and the quivers full, Soliman maintained the advantage of the day; and four thousand Christians were pierced by the Turkish arrows. In the evening, swiftness yielded to strength: on either side, the numbers were equal or at least as great as any ground could hold, or any generals could manage; but in turning the hills, the last division of Raymond and his provincials was led, perhaps without design on the rear of an exhausted enemy; and the long contest was determined. Besides a nameless and unaccounted multitude, three thousand Pagan knights were slain in the battle and pursuit; the camp of Soliman was pillaged; and in the variety of precious spoil, the curiosity of the Latins was amused with foreign arms and apparel, and the new aspect of dromedaries and camels. The importance of the victory was proved by the hasty retreat of the sultan: reserving ten thousand guards of the relics of his army, Soliman evacuated the kingdom of Roum, and hastened to implore the aid, and kindle the resentment, of his Eastern brethren. In a march of five hundred miles, the crusaders traversed the Lesser Asia, through a wasted land and deserted towns, without finding either a friend or an enemy. The geographer 87 may trace the position of Dorylaeum, Antioch of Pisidia, Iconium, Archelais, and Germanicia, and may compare those classic appellations with the modern names of Eskishehr the old city, Akshehr the white city, Cogni, Erekli, and Marash. As the pilgrims passed over a desert, where a draught of water is exchanged for silver, they were tormented by intolerable thirst; and on the banks of the first rivulet, their haste and intemperance were still more pernicious to the disorderly throng. They climbed with toil and danger the steep and slippery sides of Mount Taurus; many of the soldiers cast away their arms to secure their footsteps; and had not terror preceded their van, the long and trembling file might have been driven down the precipice by a handful of resolute enemies. Two of their most respectable chiefs, the duke of Lorraine and the count of Tholouse, were carried in litters: Raymond was raised, as it is said by miracle, from a hopeless malady; and Godfrey had been torn by a bear, as he pursued that rough and perilous chase in the mountains of Pisidia.
84 (return)
[ Baronius has produced a very doubtful letter to his
brother Roger, (A.D. 1098, No. 15.) The enemies consisted of Medes,
Persians, Chaldeans: be it so. The first attack was cum nostro
incommodo; true and tender. But why Godfrey of Bouillon and Hugh
brothers! Tancred is styled filius; of whom? Certainly not of Roger, nor
of Bohemond.]
85 (return)
[ Verumtamen dicunt se esse de Francorum generatione; et
quia nullus homo naturaliter debet esse miles nisi Franci et Turci,
(Gesta Francorum, p. 7.) The same community of blood and valor is
attested by Archbishop Baldric, (p. 99.)]
86 (return)
[ Balista, Balestra, Arbalestre. See Muratori, Antiq. tom.
ii. p. 517-524. Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. i. p. 531, 532. In the
time of Anna Comnena, this weapon, which she describes under the name
of izangra, was unknown in the East, (l. x. p. 291.) By a humane
inconsistency, the pope strove to prohibit it in Christian wars.]
87 (return)
[ The curious reader may compare the classic learning of
Cellarius and the geographical science of D'Anville. William of Tyre is
the only historian of the crusades who has any knowledge of antiquity;
and M. Otter trod almost in the footsteps of the Franks from
Constantinople to Antioch, (Voyage en Turquie et en Perse, tom. i. p.
35-88.) * Note: The journey of Col. Macdonald Kinneir in Asia Minor
throws considerable light on the geography of this march of the
crusaders.—M.]
To improve the general consternation, the cousin of Bohemond and the brother of Godfrey were detached from the main army with their respective squadrons of five, and of seven, hundred knights. They overran in a rapid career the hills and sea-coast of Cilicia, from Cogni to the Syrian gates: the Norman standard was first planted on the walls of Tarsus and Malmistra; but the proud injustice of Baldwin at length provoked the patient and generous Italian; and they turned their consecrated swords against each other in a private and profane quarrel. Honor was the motive, and fame the reward, of Tancred; but fortune smiled on the more selfish enterprise of his rival. 88 He was called to the assistance of a Greek or Armenian tyrant, who had been suffered under the Turkish yoke to reign over the Christians of Edessa. Baldwin accepted the character of his son and champion: but no sooner was he introduced into the city, than he inflamed the people to the massacre of his father, occupied the throne and treasure, extended his conquests over the hills of Armenia and the plain of Mesopotamia, and founded the first principality of the Franks or Latins, which subsisted fifty-four years beyond the Euphrates. 89
88 (return)
[ This detached conquest of Edessa is best represented
by Fulcherius Carnotensis, or of Chartres, (in the collections of
Bongarsius Duchesne, and Martenne,) the valiant chaplain of Count
Baldwin (Esprit des Croisades, tom. i. p. 13, 14.) In the disputes
of that prince with Tancred, his partiality is encountered by the
partiality of Radulphus Cadomensis, the soldier and historian of the
gallant marquis.]
89 (return)
[ See de Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 456.]
Before the Franks could enter Syria, the summer, and even the autumn, were completely wasted: the siege of Antioch, or the separation and repose of the army during the winter season, was strongly debated in their council: the love of arms and the holy sepulchre urged them to advance; and reason perhaps was on the side of resolution, since every hour of delay abates the fame and force of the invader, and multiplies the resources of defensive war. The capital of Syria was protected by the River Orontes; and the iron bridge, 891 of nine arches, derives its name from the massy gates of the two towers which are constructed at either end. They were opened by the sword of the duke of Normandy: his victory gave entrance to three hundred thousand crusaders, an account which may allow some scope for losses and desertion, but which clearly detects much exaggeration in the review of Nice. In the description of Antioch, 90 it is not easy to define a middle term between her ancient magnificence, under the successors of Alexander and Augustus, and the modern aspect of Turkish desolation. The Tetrapolis, or four cities, if they retained their name and position, must have left a large vacuity in a circumference of twelve miles; and that measure, as well as the number of four hundred towers, are not perfectly consistent with the five gates, so often mentioned in the history of the siege. Yet Antioch must have still flourished as a great and populous capital. At the head of the Turkish emirs, Baghisian, a veteran chief, commanded in the place: his garrison was composed of six or seven thousand horse, and fifteen or twenty thousand foot: one hundred thousand Moslems are said to have fallen by the sword; and their numbers were probably inferior to the Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians, who had been no more than fourteen years the slaves of the house of Seljuk. From the remains of a solid and stately wall, it appears to have arisen to the height of threescore feet in the valleys; and wherever less art and labor had been applied, the ground was supposed to be defended by the river, the morass, and the mountains. Notwithstanding these fortifications, the city had been repeatedly taken by the Persians, the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Turks; so large a circuit must have yielded many pervious points of attack; and in a siege that was formed about the middle of October, the vigor of the execution could alone justify the boldness of the attempt. Whatever strength and valor could perform in the field was abundantly discharged by the champions of the cross: in the frequent occasions of sallies, of forage, of the attack and defence of convoys, they were often victorious; and we can only complain, that their exploits are sometimes enlarged beyond the scale of probability and truth. The sword of Godfrey 91 divided a Turk from the shoulder to the haunch; and one half of the infidel fell to the ground, while the other was transported by his horse to the city gate. As Robert of Normandy rode against his antagonist, "I devote thy head," he piously exclaimed, "to the daemons of hell;" and that head was instantly cloven to the breast by the resistless stroke of his descending falchion. But the reality or the report of such gigantic prowess 92 must have taught the Moslems to keep within their walls: and against those walls of earth or stone, the sword and the lance were unavailing weapons. In the slow and successive labors of a siege, the crusaders were supine and ignorant, without skill to contrive, or money to purchase, or industry to use, the artificial engines and implements of assault. In the conquest of Nice, they had been powerfully assisted by the wealth and knowledge of the Greek emperor: his absence was poorly supplied by some Genoese and Pisan vessels, that were attracted by religion or trade to the coast of Syria: the stores were scanty, the return precarious, and the communication difficult and dangerous. Indolence or weakness had prevented the Franks from investing the entire circuit; and the perpetual freedom of two gates relieved the wants and recruited the garrison of the city. At the end of seven months, after the ruin of their cavalry, and an enormous loss by famine, desertion and fatigue, the progress of the crusaders was imperceptible, and their success remote, if the Latin Ulysses, the artful and ambitious Bohemond, had not employed the arms of cunning and deceit. The Christians of Antioch were numerous and discontented: Phirouz, a Syrian renegado, had acquired the favor of the emir and the command of three towers; and the merit of his repentance disguised to the Latins, and perhaps to himself, the foul design of perfidy and treason. A secret correspondence, for their mutual interest, was soon established between Phirouz and the prince of Tarento; and Bohemond declared in the council of the chiefs, that he could deliver the city into their hands. 921 But he claimed the sovereignty of Antioch as the reward of his service; and the proposal which had been rejected by the envy, was at length extorted from the distress, of his equals. The nocturnal surprise was executed by the French and Norman princes, who ascended in person the scaling-ladders that were thrown from the walls: their new proselyte, after the murder of his too scrupulous brother, embraced and introduced the servants of Christ; the army rushed through the gates; and the Moslems soon found, that although mercy was hopeless, resistance was impotent.
But the citadel still refused to surrender; and the victims themselves were speedily encompassed and besieged by the innumerable forces of Kerboga, prince of Mosul, who, with twenty-eight Turkish emirs, advanced to the deliverance of Antioch. Five-and-twenty days the Christians spent on the verge of destruction; and the proud lieutenant of the caliph and the sultan left them only the choice of servitude or death. 93 In this extremity they collected the relics of their strength, sallied from the town, and in a single memorable day, annihilated or dispersed the host of Turks and Arabians, which they might safely report to have consisted of six hundred thousand men. 94 Their supernatural allies I shall proceed to consider: the human causes of the victory of Antioch were the fearless despair of the Franks; and the surprise, the discord, perhaps the errors, of their unskilful and presumptuous adversaries. The battle is described with as much disorder as it was fought; but we may observe the tent of Kerboga, a movable and spacious palace, enriched with the luxury of Asia, and capable of holding above two thousand persons; we may distinguish his three thousand guards, who were cased, the horse as well as the men, in complete steel.
891 (return)
[ This bridge was over the Ifrin, not the Orontes, at a
distance of three leagues from Antioch. See Wilken, vol. i. p. 172.—M.]
90 (return)
[ For Antioch, see Pocock, (Description of the East, vol.
ii. p. i. p. 188-193,) Otter, (Voyage en Turquie, &c., tom. i. p. 81,
&c.,) the Turkish geographer, (in Otter's notes,) the Index Geographicus
of Schultens, (ad calcem Bohadin. Vit. Saladin.,) and Abulfeda, (Tabula
Syriae, p. 115, 116, vers. Reiske.)]
91 (return)
[ Ensem elevat, eumque a sinistra parte scapularum, tanta
virtute intorsit, ut quod pectus medium disjunxit spinam et vitalia
interrupit; et sic lubricus ensis super crus dextrum integer exivit:
sicque caput integrum cum dextra parte corporis immersit gurgite,
partemque quae equo praesidebat remisit civitati, (Robert. Mon. p. 50.)
Cujus ense trajectus, Turcus duo factus est Turci: ut inferior alter in
urbem equitaret, alter arcitenens in flumine nataret, (Radulph. Cadom.
c. 53, p. 304.) Yet he justifies the deed by the stupendis viribus
of Godfrey; and William of Tyre covers it by obstupuit populus facti
novitate .... mirabilis, (l. v. c. 6, p. 701.) Yet it must not have
appeared incredible to the knights of that age.]
92 (return)
[ See the exploits of Robert, Raymond, and the modest
Tancred who imposed silence on his squire, (Randulph. Cadom. c. 53.)]
921 (return)
[ See the interesting extract from Kemaleddin's History of
Aleppo in Wilken, preface to vol. ii. p. 36. Phirouz, or Azzerrad, the
breastplate maker, had been pillaged and put to the torture by Bagi
Sejan, the prince of Antioch.—M.]
93 (return)
[ After mentioning the distress and humble petition of the
Franks, Abulpharagius adds the haughty reply of Codbuka, or Kerboga,
"Non evasuri estis nisi per gladium," (Dynast. p. 242.)]
94 (return)
[ In describing the host of Kerboga, most of the Latin
historians, the author of the Gesta, (p. 17,) Robert Monachus, (p. 56,)
Baldric, (p. 111,) Fulcherius Carnotensis, (p. 392,) Guibert, (p. 512,)
William of Tyre, (l. vi. c. 3, p. 714,) Bernard Thesaurarius, (c. 39,
p. 695,) are content with the vague expressions of infinita multitudo,
immensum agmen, innumerae copiae or gentes, which correspond with Anna
Comnena, (Alexias, l. xi. p. 318-320.) The numbers of the Turks are
fixed by Albert Aquensis at 200,000, (l. iv. c. 10, p. 242,) and by
Radulphus Cadomensis at 400,000 horse, (c. 72, p. 309.)]
In the eventful period of the siege and defence of Antioch, the crusaders were alternately exalted by victory or sunk in despair; either swelled with plenty or emaciated with hunger. A speculative reasoner might suppose, that their faith had a strong and serious influence on their practice; and that the soldiers of the cross, the deliverers of the holy sepulchre, prepared themselves by a sober and virtuous life for the daily contemplation of martyrdom. Experience blows away this charitable illusion; and seldom does the history of profane war display such scenes of intemperance and prostitution as were exhibited under the walls of Antioch. The grove of Daphne no longer flourished; but the Syrian air was still impregnated with the same vices; the Christians were seduced by every temptation 95 that nature either prompts or reprobates; the authority of the chiefs was despised; and sermons and edicts were alike fruitless against those scandalous disorders, not less pernicious to military discipline, than repugnant to evangelic purity. In the first days of the siege and the possession of Antioch, the Franks consumed with wanton and thoughtless prodigality the frugal subsistence of weeks and months: the desolate country no longer yielded a supply; and from that country they were at length excluded by the arms of the besieging Turks. Disease, the faithful companion of want, was envenomed by the rains of the winter, the summer heats, unwholesome food, and the close imprisonment of multitudes. The pictures of famine and pestilence are always the same, and always disgustful; and our imagination may suggest the nature of their sufferings and their resources. The remains of treasure or spoil were eagerly lavished in the purchase of the vilest nourishment; and dreadful must have been the calamities of the poor, since, after paying three marks of silver for a goat and fifteen for a lean camel, 96 the count of Flanders was reduced to beg a dinner, and Duke Godfrey to borrow a horse. Sixty thousand horse had been reviewed in the camp: before the end of the siege they were diminished to two thousand, and scarcely two hundred fit for service could be mustered on the day of battle. Weakness of body and terror of mind extinguished the ardent enthusiasm of the pilgrims; and every motive of honor and religion was subdued by the desire of life. 97 Among the chiefs, three heroes may be found without fear or reproach: Godfrey of Bouillon was supported by his magnanimous piety; Bohemond by ambition and interest; and Tancred declared, in the true spirit of chivalry, that as long as he was at the head of forty knights, he would never relinquish the enterprise of Palestine. But the count of Tholouse and Provence was suspected of a voluntary indisposition; the duke of Normandy was recalled from the sea-shore by the censures of the church: Hugh the Great, though he led the vanguard of the battle, embraced an ambiguous opportunity of returning to France and Stephen, count of Chartres, basely deserted the standard which he bore, and the council in which he presided. The soldiers were discouraged by the flight of William, viscount of Melun, surnamed the Carpenter, from the weighty strokes of his axe; and the saints were scandalized by the fall 971 of Peter the Hermit, who, after arming Europe against Asia, attempted to escape from the penance of a necessary fast. Of the multitude of recreant warriors, the names (says an historian) are blotted from the book of life; and the opprobrious epithet of the rope-dancers was applied to the deserters who dropped in the night from the walls of Antioch. The emperor Alexius, 98 who seemed to advance to the succor of the Latins, was dismayed by the assurance of their hopeless condition. They expected their fate in silent despair; oaths and punishments were tried without effect; and to rouse the soldiers to the defence of the walls, it was found necessary to set fire to their quarters.
95 (return)
[ See the tragic and scandalous fate of an archdeacon of
royal birth, who was slain by the Turks as he reposed in an orchard,
playing at dice with a Syrian concubine.]
96 (return)
[ The value of an ox rose from five solidi, (fifteen
shillings,) at Christmas to two marks, (four pounds,) and afterwards
much higher; a kid or lamb, from one shilling to eighteen of our present
money: in the second famine, a loaf of bread, or the head of an animal,
sold for a piece of gold. More examples might be produced; but it is the
ordinary, not the extraordinary, prices, that deserve the notice of the
philosopher.]
97 (return)
[ Alli multi, quorum nomina non tenemus; quia, deleta de
libro vitae, praesenti operi non sunt inserenda, (Will. Tyr. l. vi. c.
5, p. 715.) Guibert (p. 518, 523) attempts to excuse Hugh the Great, and
even Stephen of Chartres.]
971 (return)
[ Peter fell during the siege: he went afterwards on an
embassy to Kerboga Wilken. vol. i. p. 217.—M.]
98 (return)
[ See the progress of the crusade, the retreat of Alexius,
the victory of Antioch, and the conquest of Jerusalem, in the Alexiad,
l. xi. p. 317-327. Anna was so prone to exaggeration, that she
magnifies the exploits of the Latins.]
For their salvation and victory, they were indebted to the same fanaticism which had led them to the brink of ruin. In such a cause, and in such an army, visions, prophecies, and miracles, were frequent and familiar. In the distress of Antioch, they were repeated with unusual energy and success: St. Ambrose had assured a pious ecclesiastic, that two years of trial must precede the season of deliverance and grace; the deserters were stopped by the presence and reproaches of Christ himself; the dead had promised to arise and combat with their brethren; the Virgin had obtained the pardon of their sins; and their confidence was revived by a visible sign, the seasonable and splendid discovery of the Holy Lance. The policy of their chiefs has on this occasion been admired, and might surely be excused; but a pious baud is seldom produced by the cool conspiracy of many persons; and a voluntary impostor might depend on the support of the wise and the credulity of the people. Of the diocese of Marseilles, there was a priest of low cunning and loose manners, and his name was Peter Bartholemy. He presented himself at the door of the council-chamber, to disclose an apparition of St. Andrew, which had been thrice reiterated in his sleep with a dreadful menace, if he presumed to suppress the commands of Heaven. "At Antioch," said the apostle, "in the church of my brother St. Peter, near the high altar, is concealed the steel head of the lance that pierced the side of our Redeemer. In three days that instrument of eternal, and now of temporal, salvation, will be manifested to his disciples. Search, and ye shall find: bear it aloft in battle; and that mystic weapon shall penetrate the souls of the miscreants." The pope's legate, the bishop of Puy, affected to listen with coldness and distrust; but the revelation was eagerly accepted by Count Raymond, whom his faithful subject, in the name of the apostle, had chosen for the guardian of the holy lance. The experiment was resolved; and on the third day after a due preparation of prayer and fasting, the priest of Marseilles introduced twelve trusty spectators, among whom were the count and his chaplain; and the church doors were barred against the impetuous multitude. The ground was opened in the appointed place; but the workmen, who relieved each other, dug to the depth of twelve feet without discovering the object of their search. In the evening, when Count Raymond had withdrawn to his post, and the weary assistants began to murmur, Bartholemy, in his shirt, and without his shoes, boldly descended into the pit; the darkness of the hour and of the place enabled him to secrete and deposit the head of a Saracen lance; and the first sound, the first gleam, of the steel was saluted with a devout rapture. The holy lance was drawn from its recess, wrapped in a veil of silk and gold, and exposed to the veneration of the crusaders; their anxious suspense burst forth in a general shout of joy and hope, and the desponding troops were again inflamed with the enthusiasm of valor. Whatever had been the arts, and whatever might be the sentiments of the chiefs, they skilfully improved this fortunate revolution by every aid that discipline and devotion could afford. The soldiers were dismissed to their quarters with an injunction to fortify their minds and bodies for the approaching conflict, freely to bestow their last pittance on themselves and their horses, and to expect with the dawn of day the signal of victory. On the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul, the gates of Antioch were thrown open: a martial psalm, "Let the Lord arise, and let his enemies be scattered!" was chanted by a procession of priests and monks; the battle array was marshalled in twelve divisions, in honor of the twelve apostles; and the holy lance, in the absence of Raymond, was intrusted to the hands of his chaplain. The influence of his relic or trophy, was felt by the servants, and perhaps by the enemies, of Christ; 99 and its potent energy was heightened by an accident, a stratagem, or a rumor, of a miraculous complexion. Three knights, in white garments and resplendent arms, either issued, or seemed to issue, from the hills: the voice of Adhemar, the pope's legate, proclaimed them as the martyrs St. George, St. Theodore, and St. Maurice: the tumult of battle allowed no time for doubt or scrutiny; and the welcome apparition dazzled the eyes or the imagination of a fanatic army. 991 In the season of danger and triumph, the revelation of Bartholemy of Marseilles was unanimously asserted; but as soon as the temporary service was accomplished, the personal dignity and liberal arms which the count of Tholouse derived from the custody of the holy lance, provoked the envy, and awakened the reason, of his rivals. A Norman clerk presumed to sift, with a philosophic spirit, the truth of the legend, the circumstances of the discovery, and the character of the prophet; and the pious Bohemond ascribed their deliverance to the merits and intercession of Christ alone. For a while, the Provincials defended their national palladium with clamors and arms and new visions condemned to death and hell the profane sceptics who presumed to scrutinize the truth and merit of the discovery. The prevalence of incredulity compelled the author to submit his life and veracity to the judgment of God. A pile of dry fagots, four feet high and fourteen long, was erected in the midst of the camp; the flames burnt fiercely to the elevation of thirty cubits; and a narrow path of twelve inches was left for the perilous trial. The unfortunate priest of Marseilles traversed the fire with dexterity and speed; but the thighs and belly were scorched by the intense heat; he expired the next day; 992 and the logic of believing minds will pay some regard to his dying protestations of innocence and truth. Some efforts were made by the Provincials to substitute a cross, a ring, or a tabernacle, in the place of the holy lance, which soon vanished in contempt and oblivion. 100 Yet the revelation of Antioch is gravely asserted by succeeding historians: and such is the progress of credulity, that miracles most doubtful on the spot, and at the moment, will be received with implicit faith at a convenient distance of time and space.
99 (return)
[ The Mahometan Aboulmahasen (apud De Guignes, tom. ii. p.
ii. p. 95) is more correct in his account of the holy lance than the
Christians, Anna Comnena and Abulpharagius: the Greek princess confounds
it with the nail of the cross, (l. xi. p. 326;) the Jacobite primate,
with St. Peter's staff, (p. 242.)]
991 (return)
[ The real cause of this victory appears to have been the
feud in Kerboga's army Wilken, vol. ii. p. 40.—M.]
992 (return)
[ The twelfth day after. He was much injured, and his
flesh torn off, from the ardor of pious congratulation with which he
was assailed by those who witnessed his escape, unhurt, as it was first
supposed. Wilken vol. i p. 263—M.]
100 (return)
[ The two antagonists who express the most intimate
knowledge and the strongest conviction of the miracle, and of the fraud,
are Raymond des Agiles, and Radulphus Cadomensis, the one attached
to the count of Tholouse, the other to the Norman prince. Fulcherius
Carnotensis presumes to say, Audite fraudem et non fraudem! and
afterwards, Invenit lanceam, fallaciter occultatam forsitan. The rest of
the herd are loud and strenuous.]
The prudence or fortune of the Franks had delayed their invasion till the decline of the Turkish empire. 101 Under the manly government of the three first sultans, the kingdoms of Asia were united in peace and justice; and the innumerable armies which they led in person were equal in courage, and superior in discipline, to the Barbarians of the West. But at the time of the crusade, the inheritance of Malek Shaw was disputed by his four sons; their private ambition was insensible of the public danger; and, in the vicissitudes of their fortune, the royal vassals were ignorant, or regardless, of the true object of their allegiance. The twenty-eight emirs who marched with the standard or Kerboga were his rivals or enemies: their hasty levies were drawn from the towns and tents of Mesopotamia and Syria; and the Turkish veterans were employed or consumed in the civil wars beyond the Tigris. The caliph of Egypt embraced this opportunity of weakness and discord to recover his ancient possessions; and his sultan Aphdal besieged Jerusalem and Tyre, expelled the children of Ortok, and restored in Palestine the civil and ecclesiastical authority of the Fatimites. 102 They heard with astonishment of the vast armies of Christians that had passed from Europe to Asia, and rejoiced in the sieges and battles which broke the power of the Turks, the adversaries of their sect and monarchy. But the same Christians were the enemies of the prophet; and from the overthrow of Nice and Antioch, the motive of their enterprise, which was gradually understood, would urge them forwards to the banks of the Jordan, or perhaps of the Nile.
An intercourse of epistles and embassies, which rose and fell with the events of war, was maintained between the throne of Cairo and the camp of the Latins; and their adverse pride was the result of ignorance and enthusiasm. The ministers of Egypt declared in a haughty, or insinuated in a milder, tone, that their sovereign, the true and lawful commander of the faithful, had rescued Jerusalem from the Turkish yoke; and that the pilgrims, if they would divide their numbers, and lay aside their arms, should find a safe and hospitable reception at the sepulchre of Jesus. In the belief of their lost condition, the caliph Mostali despised their arms and imprisoned their deputies: the conquest and victory of Antioch prompted him to solicit those formidable champions with gifts of horses and silk robes, of vases, and purses of gold and silver; and in his estimate of their merit or power, the first place was assigned to Bohemond, and the second to Godfrey. In either fortune, the answer of the crusaders was firm and uniform: they disdained to inquire into the private claims or possessions of the followers of Mahomet; whatsoever was his name or nation, the usurper of Jerusalem was their enemy; and instead of prescribing the mode and terms of their pilgrimage, it was only by a timely surrender of the city and province, their sacred right, that he could deserve their alliance, or deprecate their impending and irresistible attack. 103
101 (return)
[ See M. De Guignes, tom. ii. p. ii. p. 223, &c.; and the
articles of Barkidrok, Mohammed, Sangiar, in D'Herbelot.]
102 (return)
[ The emir, or sultan, Aphdal, recovered Jerusalem and
Tyre, A. H. 489, (Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexandrin. p. 478. De
Guignes, tom. i. p. 249, from Abulfeda and Ben Schounah.) Jerusalem
ante adventum vestrum recuperavimus, Turcos ejecimus, say the Fatimite
ambassadors]
103 (return)
[ See the transactions between the caliph of Egypt and the
crusaders in William of Tyre (l. iv. c. 24, l. vi. c. 19) and Albert
Aquensis, (l. iii. c. 59,) who are more sensible of their importance
than the contemporary writers.]
Yet this attack, when they were within the view and reach of their glorious prize, was suspended above ten months after the defeat of Kerboga. The zeal and courage of the crusaders were chilled in the moment of victory; and instead of marching to improve the consternation, they hastily dispersed to enjoy the luxury, of Syria. The causes of this strange delay may be found in the want of strength and subordination. In the painful and various service of Antioch, the cavalry was annihilated; many thousands of every rank had been lost by famine, sickness, and desertion: the same abuse of plenty had been productive of a third famine; and the alternative of intemperance and distress had generated a pestilence, which swept away above fifty thousand of the pilgrims. Few were able to command, and none were willing to obey; the domestic feuds, which had been stifled by common fear, were again renewed in acts, or at least in sentiments, of hostility; the fortune of Baldwin and Bohemond excited the envy of their companions; the bravest knights were enlisted for the defence of their new principalities; and Count Raymond exhausted his troops and treasures in an idle expedition into the heart of Syria. 1031 The winter was consumed in discord and disorder; a sense of honor and religion was rekindled in the spring; and the private soldiers, less susceptible of ambition and jealousy, awakened with angry clamors the indolence of their chiefs. In the month of May, the relics of this mighty host proceeded from Antioch to Laodicea: about forty thousand Latins, of whom no more than fifteen hundred horse, and twenty thousand foot, were capable of immediate service. Their easy march was continued between Mount Libanus and the sea-shore: their wants were liberally supplied by the coasting traders of Genoa and Pisa; and they drew large contributions from the emirs of Tripoli, Tyre, Sidon, Acre, and Caesarea, who granted a free passage, and promised to follow the example of Jerusalem. From Caesarea they advanced into the midland country; their clerks recognized the sacred geography of Lydda, Ramla, Emmaus, and Bethlem, 1032 and as soon as they descried the holy city, the crusaders forgot their toils and claimed their reward. 104
1031 (return)
[ This is not quite correct: he took Marra on his road.
His excursions were partly to obtain provisions for the army and fodder
for the horses Wilken, vol. i. p. 226.—M.]
1032 (return)
[ Scarcely of Bethlehem, to the south of Jerusalem.— M.]
104 (return)
[ The greatest part of the march of the Franks is traced,
and most accurately traced, in Maundrell's Journey from Aleppo to
Jerusalem, (p. 11-67;) un des meilleurs morceaux, sans contredit qu'on
ait dans ce genre, (D'Anville, Memoire sur Jerusalem, p. 27.)]
Jerusalem has derived some reputation from the number and importance of her memorable sieges. It was not till after a long and obstinate contest that Babylon and Rome could prevail against the obstinacy of the people, the craggy ground that might supersede the necessity of fortifications, and the walls and towers that would have fortified the most accessible plain. 105 These obstacles were diminished in the age of the crusades. The bulwarks had been completely destroyed and imperfectly restored: the Jews, their nation, and worship, were forever banished; but nature is less changeable than man, and the site of Jerusalem, though somewhat softened and somewhat removed, was still strong against the assaults of an enemy. By the experience of a recent siege, and a three years' possession, the Saracens of Egypt had been taught to discern, and in some degree to remedy, the defects of a place, which religion as well as honor forbade them to resign. Aladin, or Iftikhar, the caliph's lieutenant, was intrusted with the defence: his policy strove to restrain the native Christians by the dread of their own ruin and that of the holy sepulchre; to animate the Moslems by the assurance of temporal and eternal rewards. His garrison is said to have consisted of forty thousand Turks and Arabians; and if he could muster twenty thousand of the inhabitants, it must be confessed that the besieged were more numerous than the besieging army. 106 Had the diminished strength and numbers of the Latins allowed them to grasp the whole circumference of four thousand yards, (about two English miles and a half, 107 to what useful purpose should they have descended into the valley of Ben Hinnom and torrent of Cedron, 108 or approach the precipices of the south and east, from whence they had nothing either to hope or fear? Their siege was more reasonably directed against the northern and western sides of the city. Godfrey of Bouillon erected his standard on the first swell of Mount Calvary: to the left, as far as St. Stephen's gate, the line of attack was continued by Tancred and the two Roberts; and Count Raymond established his quarters from the citadel to the foot of Mount Sion, which was no longer included within the precincts of the city. On the fifth day, the crusaders made a general assault, in the fanatic hope of battering down the walls without engines, and of scaling them without ladders. By the dint of brutal force, they burst the first barrier; but they were driven back with shame and slaughter to the camp: the influence of vision and prophecy was deadened by the too frequent abuse of those pious stratagems; and time and labor were found to be the only means of victory. The time of the siege was indeed fulfilled in forty days, but they were forty days of calamity and anguish. A repetition of the old complaint of famine may be imputed in some degree to the voracious or disorderly appetite of the Franks; but the stony soil of Jerusalem is almost destitute of water; the scanty springs and hasty torrents were dry in the summer season; nor was the thirst of the besiegers relieved, as in the city, by the artificial supply of cisterns and aqueducts. The circumjacent country is equally destitute of trees for the uses of shade or building, but some large beams were discovered in a cave by the crusaders: a wood near Sichem, the enchanted grove of Tasso, 109 was cut down: the necessary timber was transported to the camp by the vigor and dexterity of Tancred; and the engines were framed by some Genoese artists, who had fortunately landed in the harbor of Jaffa. Two movable turrets were constructed at the expense, and in the stations, of the duke of Lorraine and the count of Tholouse, and rolled forwards with devout labor, not to the most accessible, but to the most neglected, parts of the fortification. Raymond's Tower was reduced to ashes by the fire of the besieged, but his colleague was more vigilant and successful; 1091 the enemies were driven by his archers from the rampart; the draw-bridge was let down; and on a Friday, at three in the afternoon, the day and hour of the passion, Godfrey of Bouillon stood victorious on the walls of Jerusalem. His example was followed on every side by the emulation of valor; and about four hundred and sixty years after the conquest of Omar, the holy city was rescued from the Mahometan yoke. In the pillage of public and private wealth, the adventurers had agreed to respect the exclusive property of the first occupant; and the spoils of the great mosque, seventy lamps and massy vases of gold and silver, rewarded the diligence, and displayed the generosity, of Tancred. A bloody sacrifice was offered by his mistaken votaries to the God of the Christians: resistance might provoke but neither age nor sex could mollify, their implacable rage: they indulged themselves three days in a promiscuous massacre; 110 and the infection of the dead bodies produced an epidemical disease. After seventy thousand Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews had been burnt in their synagogue, they could still reserve a multitude of captives, whom interest or lassitude persuaded them to spare. Of these savage heroes of the cross, Tancred alone betrayed some sentiments of compassion; yet we may praise the more selfish lenity of Raymond, who granted a capitulation and safe-conduct to the garrison of the citadel. 111 The holy sepulchre was now free; and the bloody victors prepared to accomplish their vow. Bareheaded and barefoot, with contrite hearts, and in an humble posture, they ascended the hill of Calvary, amidst the loud anthems of the clergy; kissed the stone which had covered the Savior of the world; and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monument of their redemption. This union of the fiercest and most tender passions has been variously considered by two philosophers; by the one, 112 as easy and natural; by the other, 113 as absurd and incredible. Perhaps it is too rigorously applied to the same persons and the same hour; the example of the virtuous Godfrey awakened the piety of his companions; while they cleansed their bodies, they purified their minds; nor shall I believe that the most ardent in slaughter and rapine were the foremost in the procession to the holy sepulchre.
105 (return)
[ See the masterly description of Tacitus, (Hist. v. 11,
12, 13,) who supposes that the Jewish lawgivers had provided for a
perpetual state of hostility against the rest of mankind. * Note: This
is an exaggerated inference from the words of Tacitus, who speaks of
the founders of the city, not the lawgivers. Praeviderant conditores,
ex diversitate morum, crebra bella; inde cuncta quamvis adversus loagum
obsidium.—M.]
106 (return)
[ The lively scepticism of Voltaire is balanced with sense
and erudition by the French author of the Esprit des Croisades, (tom.
iv. p. 386-388,) who observes, that, according to the Arabians, the
inhabitants of Jerusalem must have exceeded 200,000; that in the siege
of Titus, Josephus collects 1,300,000 Jews; that they are stated by
Tacitus himself at 600,000; and that the largest defalcation, that his
accepimus can justify, will still leave them more numerous than the
Roman army.]
107 (return)
[ Maundrell, who diligently perambulated the walls, found
a circuit of 4630 paces, or 4167 English yards, (p. 109, 110: ) from an
authentic plan, D'Anville concludes a measure nearly similar, of 1960
French toises, (p. 23-29,) in his scarce and valuable tract. For the
topography of Jerusalem, see Reland, (Palestina, tom. ii. p. 832-860.)]
108 (return)
[ Jerusalem was possessed only of the torrent of Kedron,
dry in summer, and of the little spring or brook of Siloe, (Reland,
tom. i. p. 294, 300.) Both strangers and natives complain of the want
of water, which, in time of war, was studiously aggravated. Within the
city, Tacitus mentions a perennial fountain, an aqueduct and cisterns
for rain water. The aqueduct was conveyed from the rivulet Tekos or
Etham, which is likewise mentioned by Bohadin, (in Vit. Saludio p.
238.)]
109 (return)
[ Gierusalomme Liberata, canto xiii. It is pleasant enough
to observe how Tasso has copied and embellished the minutest details of
the siege.]
1091 (return)
[ This does not appear by Wilken's account, (p. 294.) They
fought in vair the whole of the Thursday.—M.]
110 (return)
[ Besides the Latins, who are not ashamed of the massacre,
see Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 363,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 243,)
and M. De Guignes, tom. ii. p. ii. p. 99, from Aboulmahasen.]
111 (return)
[ The old tower Psephina, in the middle ages Neblosa, was
named Castellum Pisanum, from the patriarch Daimbert. It is still the
citadel, the residence of the Turkish aga, and commands a prospect of
the Dead Sea, Judea, and Arabia, (D'Anville, p. 19-23.) It was likewise
called the Tower of David.]
112 (return)
[ Hume, in his History of England, vol. i. p. 311, 312,
octavo edition.]
113 (return)
[ Voltaire, in his Essai sur l'Histoire Generale, tom ii.
c. 54, p 345, 346]
Eight days after this memorable event, which Pope Urban did not live to hear, the Latin chiefs proceeded to the election of a king, to guard and govern their conquests in Palestine. Hugh the Great, and Stephen of Chartres, had retired with some loss of reputation, which they strove to regain by a second crusade and an honorable death. Baldwin was established at Edessa, and Bohemond at Antioch; and two Roberts, the duke of Normandy 114 and the count of Flanders, preferred their fair inheritance in the West to a doubtful competition or a barren sceptre. The jealousy and ambition of Raymond were condemned by his own followers, and the free, the just, the unanimous voice of the army proclaimed Godfrey of Bouillon the first and most worthy of the champions of Christendom. His magnanimity accepted a trust as full of danger as of glory; but in a city where his Savior had been crowned with thorns, the devout pilgrim rejected the name and ensigns of royalty; and the founder of the kingdom of Jerusalem contented himself with the modest title of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre. His government of a single year, 115 too short for the public happiness, was interrupted in the first fortnight by a summons to the field, by the approach of the vizier or sultan of Egypt, who had been too slow to prevent, but who was impatient to avenge, the loss of Jerusalem. His total overthrow in the battle of Ascalon sealed the establishment of the Latins in Syria, and signalized the valor of the French princes who in this action bade a long farewell to the holy wars.
Some glory might be derived from the prodigious inequality of numbers, though I shall not count the myriads of horse and foot 1151 on the side of the Fatimites; but, except three thousand Ethiopians or Blacks, who were armed with flails or scourges of iron, the Barbarians of the South fled on the first onset, and afforded a pleasing comparison between the active valor of the Turks and the sloth and effeminacy of the natives of Egypt. After suspending before the holy sepulchre the sword and standard of the sultan, the new king (he deserves the title) embraced his departing companions, and could retain only with the gallant Tancred three hundred knights, and two thousand foot-soldiers for the defence of Palestine. His sovereignty was soon attacked by a new enemy, the only one against whom Godfrey was a coward. Adhemar, bishop of Puy, who excelled both in council and action, had been swept away in the last plague at Antioch: the remaining ecclesiastics preserved only the pride and avarice of their character; and their seditious clamors had required that the choice of a bishop should precede that of a king. The revenue and jurisdiction of the lawful patriarch were usurped by the Latin clergy: the exclusion of the Greeks and Syrians was justified by the reproach of heresy or schism; 116 and, under the iron yoke of their deliverers, the Oriental Christians regretted the tolerating government of the Arabian caliphs. Daimbert, archbishop of Pisa, had long been trained in the secret policy of Rome: he brought a fleet at his countrymen to the succor of the Holy Land, and was installed, without a competitor, the spiritual and temporal head of the church. 1161 The new patriarch 117 immediately grasped the sceptre which had been acquired by the toil and blood of the victorious pilgrims; and both Godfrey and Bohemond submitted to receive at his hands the investiture of their feudal possessions. Nor was this sufficient; Daimbert claimed the immediate property of Jerusalem and Jaffa; instead of a firm and generous refusal, the hero negotiated with the priest; a quarter of either city was ceded to the church; and the modest bishop was satisfied with an eventual reversion of the rest, on the death of Godfrey without children, or on the future acquisition of a new seat at Cairo or Damascus.
114 (return)
[ The English ascribe to Robert of Normandy, and the
Provincials to Raymond of Tholouse, the glory of refusing the crown; but
the honest voice of tradition has preserved the memory of the ambition
and revenge (Villehardouin, No. 136) of the count of St. Giles. He died
at the siege of Tripoli, which was possessed by his descendants.]
115 (return)
[ See the election, the battle of Ascalon, &c., in William
of Tyre l. ix. c. 1-12, and in the conclusion of the Latin historians
of the first crusade.]
1151 (return)
[ 20,000 Franks, 300,000 Mussulmen, according to Wilken,
(vol. ii. p. 9)—M.]
116 (return)
[ Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 479.]
1161 (return)
[ Arnulf was first chosen, but illegitimately, and
degraded. He was ever after the secret enemy of Daimbert or Dagobert.
Wilken, vol. i. p. 306, vol. ii. p. 52.—M]
117 (return)
[ See the claims of the patriarch Daimbert, in William of
Tyre (l. ix. c. 15-18, x. 4, 7, 9,) who asserts with marvellous candor
the independence of the conquerors and kings of Jerusalem.]
Without this indulgence, the conqueror would have almost been stripped of his infant kingdom, which consisted only of Jerusalem and Jaffa, with about twenty villages and towns of the adjacent country. 118 Within this narrow verge, the Mahometans were still lodged in some impregnable castles: and the husbandman, the trader, and the pilgrim, were exposed to daily and domestic hostility. By the arms of Godfrey himself, and of the two Baldwins, his brother and cousin, who succeeded to the throne, the Latins breathed with more ease and safety; and at length they equalled, in the extent of their dominions, though not in the millions of their subjects, the ancient princes of Judah and Israel. 119 After the reduction of the maritime cities of Laodicea, Tripoli, Tyre, and Ascalon, 120 which were powerfully assisted by the fleets of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, and even of Flanders and Norway, 121 the range of sea-coast from Scanderoon to the borders of Egypt was possessed by the Christian pilgrims. If the prince of Antioch disclaimed his supremacy, the counts of Edessa and Tripoli owned themselves the vassals of the king of Jerusalem: the Latins reigned beyond the Euphrates; and the four cities of Hems, Hamah, Damascus, and Aleppo, were the only relics of the Mahometan conquests in Syria. 122 The laws and language, the manners and titles, of the French nation and Latin church, were introduced into these transmarine colonies. According to the feudal jurisprudence, the principal states and subordinate baronies descended in the line of male and female succession: 123 but the children of the first conquerors, 124 a motley and degenerate race, were dissolved by the luxury of the climate; the arrival of new crusaders from Europe was a doubtful hope and a casual event. The service of the feudal tenures 125 was performed by six hundred and sixty-six knights, who might expect the aid of two hundred more under the banner of the count of Tripoli; and each knight was attended to the field by four squires or archers on horseback. 126 Five thousand and seventy sergeants, most probably foot-soldiers, were supplied by the churches and cities; and the whole legal militia of the kingdom could not exceed eleven thousand men, a slender defence against the surrounding myriads of Saracens and Turks. 127 But the firmest bulwark of Jerusalem was founded on the knights of the Hospital of St. John, 128 and of the temple of Solomon; 129 on the strange association of a monastic and military life, which fanaticism might suggest, but which policy must approve. The flower of the nobility of Europe aspired to wear the cross, and to profess the vows, of these respectable orders; their spirit and discipline were immortal; and the speedy donation of twenty-eight thousand farms, or manors, 130 enabled them to support a regular force of cavalry and infantry for the defence of Palestine. The austerity of the convent soon evaporated in the exercise of arms; the world was scandalized by the pride, avarice, and corruption of these Christian soldiers; their claims of immunity and jurisdiction disturbed the harmony of the church and state; and the public peace was endangered by their jealous emulation. But in their most dissolute period, the knights of their hospital and temple maintained their fearless and fanatic character: they neglected to live, but they were prepared to die, in the service of Christ; and the spirit of chivalry, the parent and offspring of the crusades, has been transplanted by this institution from the holy sepulchre to the Isle of Malta. 131
118 (return)
[ Willerm. Tyr. l. x. 19. The Historia Hierosolimitana of
Jacobus a Vitriaco (l. i. c. 21-50) and the Secreta Fidelium Crucis of
Marinus Sanutus (l. iii. p. 1) describe the state and conquests of the
Latin kingdom of Jerusalem.]
119 (return)
[ An actual muster, not including the tribes of Levi and
Benjamin, gave David an army of 1,300,000 or 1,574,000 fighting men;
which, with the addition of women, children, and slaves, may imply a
population of thirteen millions, in a country sixty leagues in length,
and thirty broad. The honest and rational Le Clerc (Comment on 2d Samuel
xxiv. and 1st Chronicles, xxi.) aestuat angusto in limite, and mutters
his suspicion of a false transcript; a dangerous suspicion! * Note:
David determined to take a census of his vast dominions, which extended
from Lebanon to the frontiers of Egypt, from the Euphrates to the
Mediterranean. The numbers (in 2 Sam. xxiv. 9, and 1 Chron. xxi. 5)
differ; but the lowest gives 800,000 men fit to bear arms in Israel,
500,000 in Judah. Hist. of Jews, vol. i. p. 248. Gibbon has taken the
highest census in his estimate of the population, and confined the
dominions of David to Jordandic Palestine.—M.]
120 (return)
[ These sieges are related, each in its proper place, in
the great history of William of Tyre, from the ixth to the xviiith book,
and more briefly told by Bernardus Thesaurarius, (de Acquisitione Terrae
Sanctae, c. 89-98, p. 732-740.) Some domestic facts are celebrated in
the Chronicles of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, in the vith, ixth, and xiith
tomes of Muratori.]
121 (return)
[ Quidam populus de insulis occidentis egressus, et maxime
de ea parte quae Norvegia dicitur. William of Tyre (l. xi. c. 14, p.
804) marks their course per Britannicum Mare et Calpen to the siege of
Sidon.]
122 (return)
[ Benelathir, apud De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii.
part ii. p. 150, 151, A.D. 1127. He must speak of the inland country.]
123 (return)
[ Sanut very sensibly descants on the mischiefs of female
succession, in a land hostibus circumdata, ubi cuncta virilia et
virtuosa esse deberent. Yet, at the summons, and with the approbation,
of her feudal lord, a noble damsel was obliged to choose a husband and
champion, (Assises de Jerusalem, c. 242, &c.) See in M. De Guignes (tom.
i. p. 441-471) the accurate and useful tables of these dynasties, which
are chiefly drawn from the Lignages d'Outremer.]
124 (return)
[ They were called by derision Poullains, Pallani, and
their name is never pronounced without contempt, (Ducange, Gloss. Latin.
tom. v. p. 535; and Observations sur Joinville, p. 84, 85; Jacob. a
Vitriaco Hist. Hierosol. i. c. 67, 72; and Sanut, l. iii. p. viii. c. 2,
p. 182.) Illustrium virorum, qui ad Terrae Sanctae.... liberationem
in ipsa manserunt, degeneres filii.... in deliciis enutriti, molles et
effoe minati, &c.]
125 (return)
[ This authentic detail is extracted from the Assises de
Jerusalem (c. 324, 326-331.) Sanut (l. iii. p. viii. c. 1, p. 174)
reckons only 518 knights, and 5775 followers.]
126 (return)
[ The sum total, and the division, ascertain the service
of the three great baronies at 100 knights each; and the text of the
Assises, which extends the number to 500, can only be justified by this
supposition.]
127 (return)
[ Yet on great emergencies (says Sanut) the barons brought
a voluntary aid; decentem comitivam militum juxta statum suum.]
128 (return)
[ William of Tyre (l. xviii. c. 3, 4, 5) relates the
ignoble origin and early insolence of the Hospitallers, who soon
deserted their humble patron, St. John the Eleemosynary, for the more
august character of St. John the Baptist, (see the ineffectual struggles
of Pagi, Critica, A. D 1099, No. 14-18.) They assumed the profession of
arms about the year 1120; the Hospital was mater; the Temple filia; the
Teutonic order was founded A.D. 1190, at the siege of Acre, (Mosheim
Institut p. 389, 390.)]
129 (return)
[ See St. Bernard de Laude Novae Militiae Templi, composed
A.D. 1132-1136, in Opp. tom. i. p. ii. p. 547-563, edit. Mabillon,
Venet. 1750. Such an encomium, which is thrown away on the dead
Templars, would be highly valued by the historians of Malta.]
130 (return)
[ Matthew Paris, Hist. Major, p. 544. He assigns to the
Hospitallers 19,000, to the Templars 9,000 maneria, word of much higher
import (as Ducange has rightly observed) in the English than in the
French idiom. Manor is a lordship, manoir a dwelling.]
131 (return)
[ In the three first books of the Histoire de Chevaliers de
Malthe par l'Abbe de Vertot, the reader may amuse himself with a fair,
and sometimes flattering, picture of the order, while it was employed
for the defence of Palestine. The subsequent books pursue their
emigration to Rhodes and Malta.]
The spirit of freedom, which pervades the feudal institutions, was felt in its strongest energy by the volunteers of the cross, who elected for their chief the most deserving of his peers. Amidst the slaves of Asia, unconscious of the lesson or example, a model of political liberty was introduced; and the laws of the French kingdom are derived from the purest source of equality and justice. Of such laws, the first and indispensable condition is the assent of those whose obedience they require, and for whose benefit they are designed. No sooner had Godfrey of Bouillon accepted the office of supreme magistrate, than he solicited the public and private advice of the Latin pilgrims, who were the best skilled in the statutes and customs of Europe. From these materials, with the counsel and approbation of the patriarch and barons, of the clergy and laity, Godfrey composed the Assise of Jerusalem, 132 a precious monument of feudal jurisprudence. The new code, attested by the seals of the king, the patriarch, and the viscount of Jerusalem, was deposited in the holy sepulchre, enriched with the improvements of succeeding times, and respectfully consulted as often as any doubtful question arose in the tribunals of Palestine. With the kingdom and city all was lost: 133 the fragments of the written law were preserved by jealous tradition 134 and variable practice till the middle of the thirteenth century: the code was restored by the pen of John d'Ibelin, count of Jaffa, one of the principal feudatories; 135 and the final revision was accomplished in the year thirteen hundred and sixty-nine, for the use of the Latin kingdom of Cyprus. 136
132 (return)
[ The Assises de Jerusalem, in old law French, were printed
with Beaumanoir's Coutumes de Beauvoisis, (Bourges and Paris, 1690, in
folio,) and illustrated by Gaspard Thaumas de la Thaumassiere, with a
comment and glossary. An Italian version had been published in 1534, at
Venice, for the use of the kingdom of Cyprus. * Note: See Wilken, vol.
i. p. 17, &c.,—M.]
133 (return)
[ A la terre perdue, tout fut perdu, is the vigorous
expression of the Assise, (c. 281.) Yet Jerusalem capitulated with
Saladin; the queen and the principal Christians departed in peace; and
a code so precious and so portable could not provoke the avarice of the
conquerors. I have sometimes suspected the existence of this original
copy of the Holy Sepulchre, which might be invented to sanctify and
authenticate the traditionary customs of the French in Palestine.]
134 (return)
[ A noble lawyer, Raoul de Tabarie, denied the prayer of
King Amauri, (A.D. 1195-1205,) that he would commit his knowledged to
writing, and frankly declared, que de ce qu'il savoit ne feroit-il ja
nul borjois son pareill, ne null sage homme lettre, (c. 281.)]
135 (return)
[ The compiler of this work, Jean d'Ibelin, was count of
Jaffa and Ascalon, lord of Baruth (Berytus) and Rames, and died A.D.
1266, (Sanut, l. iii. p. ii. c. 5, 8.) The family of Ibelin, which
descended from a younger brother of a count of Chartres in France, long
flourished in Palestine and Cyprus, (see the Lignages de deca Mer, or
d'Outremer, c. 6, at the end of the Assises de Jerusalem, an original
book, which records the pedigrees of the French adventurers.)]
136 (return)
[ By sixteen commissioners chosen in the states of the
island: the work was finished the 3d of November, 1369, sealed with four
seals and deposited in the cathedral of Nicosia, (see the preface to the
Assises.)]
The justice and freedom of the constitution were maintained by two tribunals of unequal dignity, which were instituted by Godfrey of Bouillon after the conquest of Jerusalem. The king, in person, presided in the upper court, the court of the barons. Of these the four most conspicuous were the prince of Galilee, the lord of Sidon and Caesarea, and the counts of Jaffa and Tripoli, who, perhaps with the constable and marshal, 137 were in a special manner the compeers and judges of each other. But all the nobles, who held their lands immediately of the crown, were entitled and bound to attend the king's court; and each baron exercised a similar jurisdiction on the subordinate assemblies of his own feudatories. The connection of lord and vassal was honorable and voluntary: reverence was due to the benefactor, protection to the dependant; but they mutually pledged their faith to each other; and the obligation on either side might be suspended by neglect or dissolved by injury. The cognizance of marriages and testaments was blended with religion, and usurped by the clergy: but the civil and criminal causes of the nobles, the inheritance and tenure of their fiefs, formed the proper occupation of the supreme court. Each member was the judge and guardian both of public and private rights. It was his duty to assert with his tongue and sword the lawful claims of the lord; but if an unjust superior presumed to violate the freedom or property of a vassal, the confederate peers stood forth to maintain his quarrel by word and deed. They boldly affirmed his innocence and his wrongs; demanded the restitution of his liberty or his lands; suspended, after a fruitless demand, their own service; rescued their brother from prison; and employed every weapon in his defence, without offering direct violence to the person of their lord, which was ever sacred in their eyes. 138 In their pleadings, replies, and rejoinders, the advocates of the court were subtle and copious; but the use of argument and evidence was often superseded by judicial combat; and the Assise of Jerusalem admits in many cases this barbarous institution, which has been slowly abolished by the laws and manners of Europe.
137 (return)
[ The cautious John D'Ibelin argues, rather than affirms,
that Tripoli is the fourth barony, and expresses some doubt concerning
the right or pretension of the constable and marshal, (c. 323.)]
138 (return)
[ Entre seignor et homme ne n'a que la foi;.... mais tant
que l'homme doit a son seignor reverence en toutes choses, (c. 206.)
Tous les hommes dudit royaume sont par ladite Assise tenus les uns as
autres.... et en celle maniere que le seignor mette main ou face mettre
au cors ou au fie d'aucun d'yaus sans esgard et sans connoissans de
court, que tous les autres doivent venir devant le seignor, &c., (212.)
The form of their remonstrances is conceived with the noble simplicity
of freedom.]
The trial by battle was established in all criminal cases which affected the life, or limb, or honor, of any person; and in all civil transactions, of or above the value of one mark of silver. It appears that in criminal cases the combat was the privilege of the accuser, who, except in a charge of treason, avenged his personal injury, or the death of those persons whom he had a right to represent; but wherever, from the nature of the charge, testimony could be obtained, it was necessary for him to produce witnesses of the fact. In civil cases, the combat was not allowed as the means of establishing the claim of the demandant; but he was obliged to produce witnesses who had, or assumed to have, knowledge of the fact. The combat was then the privilege of the defendant; because he charged the witness with an attempt by perjury to take away his right. He came therefore to be in the same situation as the appellant in criminal cases. It was not then as a mode of proof that the combat was received, nor as making negative evidence, (according to the supposition of Montesquieu; 139 but in every case the right to offer battle was founded on the right to pursue by arms the redress of an injury; and the judicial combat was fought on the same principle, and with the same spirit, as a private duel. Champions were only allowed to women, and to men maimed or past the age of sixty. The consequence of a defeat was death to the person accused, or to the champion or witness, as well as to the accuser himself: but in civil cases, the demandant was punished with infamy and the loss of his suit, while his witness and champion suffered ignominious death. In many cases it was in the option of the judge to award or to refuse the combat: but two are specified, in which it was the inevitable result of the challenge; if a faithful vassal gave the lie to his compeer, who unjustly claimed any portion of their lord's demesnes; or if an unsuccessful suitor presumed to impeach the judgment and veracity of the court. He might impeach them, but the terms were severe and perilous: in the same day he successively fought all the members of the tribunal, even those who had been absent; a single defeat was followed by death and infamy; and where none could hope for victory, it is highly probable that none would adventure the trial. In the Assise of Jerusalem, the legal subtlety of the count of Jaffa is more laudably employed to elude, than to facilitate, the judicial combat, which he derives from a principle of honor rather than of superstition. 140
139 (return)
[ See l'Esprit des Loix, l. xxviii. In the forty years
since its publication, no work has been more read and criticized; and
the spirit of inquiry which it has excited is not the least of our
obligations to the author.]
140 (return)
[ For the intelligence of this obscure and obsolete
jurisprudence (c. 80-111) I am deeply indebted to the friendship of a
learned lord, who, with an accurate and discerning eye, has surveyed the
philosophic history of law. By his studies, posterity might be
enriched: the merit of the orator and the judge can be felt only by his
contemporaries.]
Among the causes which enfranchised the plebeians from the yoke of feudal tyranny, the institution of cities and corporations is one of the most powerful; and if those of Palestine are coeval with the first crusade, they may be ranked with the most ancient of the Latin world. Many of the pilgrims had escaped from their lords under the banner of the cross; and it was the policy of the French princes to tempt their stay by the assurance of the rights and privileges of freemen. It is expressly declared in the Assise of Jerusalem, that after instituting, for his knights and barons, the court of peers, in which he presided himself, Godfrey of Bouillon established a second tribunal, in which his person was represented by his viscount. The jurisdiction of this inferior court extended over the burgesses of the kingdom; and it was composed of a select number of the most discreet and worthy citizens, who were sworn to judge, according to the laws of the actions and fortunes of their equals. 141 In the conquest and settlement of new cities, the example of Jerusalem was imitated by the kings and their great vassals; and above thirty similar corporations were founded before the loss of the Holy Land. Another class of subjects, the Syrians, 142 or Oriental Christians, were oppressed by the zeal of the clergy, and protected by the toleration of the state. Godfrey listened to their reasonable prayer, that they might be judged by their own national laws. A third court was instituted for their use, of limited and domestic jurisdiction: the sworn members were Syrians, in blood, language, and religion; but the office of the president (in Arabic, of the rais) was sometimes exercised by the viscount of the city. At an immeasurable distance below the nobles, the burgesses, and the strangers, the Assise of Jerusalem condescends to mention the villains and slaves, the peasants of the land and the captives of war, who were almost equally considered as the objects of property. The relief or protection of these unhappy men was not esteemed worthy of the care of the legislator; but he diligently provides for the recovery, though not indeed for the punishment, of the fugitives. Like hounds, or hawks, who had strayed from the lawful owner, they might be lost and claimed: the slave and falcon were of the same value; but three slaves, or twelve oxen, were accumulated to equal the price of the war-horse; and a sum of three hundred pieces of gold was fixed, in the age of chivalry, as the equivalent of the more noble animal. 143
141 (return)
[ Louis le Gros, who is considered as the father of this
institution in France, did not begin his reign till nine years (A.D.
1108) after Godfrey of Bouillon, (Assises, c. 2, 324.) For its origin
and effects, see the judicious remarks of Dr. Robertson, (History of
Charles V. vol. i. p. 30-36, 251-265, quarto edition.)]
142 (return)
[ Every reader conversant with the historians of the
crusades will understand by the peuple des Suriens, the Oriental
Christians, Melchites, Jacobites, or Nestorians, who had all adopted the
use of the Arabic language, (vol. iv. p. 593.)]
143 (return)
[ See the Assises de Jerusalem, (310, 311, 312.) These laws
were enacted as late as the year 1350, in the kingdom of Cyprus. In
the same century, in the reign of Edward I., I understand, from a late
publication, (of his Book of Account,) that the price of a war-horse was
not less exorbitant in England.]