The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

[Footnote 41: Head of the Byzantine empire.]

Alexius wished simply to be rid of their presence: they had to deal with an enemy still more crafty and formidable in the Seljukian sultan David. The vagrants whom Peter and Walter had brought thus far on the road to Jerusalem were scattered about the land in search of food; and it was no hard task for David to cheat the main body with the false tidings that their companions had carried the walls of Nice, and were revelling in the pleasures and spoils of his capital. The doomed horde rushed into the plain which fronts the city; and a vast heap of bones alone remained to tell the story of the great catastrophe, when the forces which might more legitimately claim the name of an army passed the spot where the Seljukian had entrapped and crushed his victims. In this wild expedition not less, it is said, than three hundred thousand human beings had already paid the penalty of their lives.

Still the First Crusade was destined to accomplish more than any of the seven or eight crusades which followed it; and this measure of success it achieved probably because none of the great European sovereigns took part in it. The task of setting up a Latin kingdom in Palestine was to be achieved by princes of the second order.

Of these the foremost and the most deservedly illustrious was Godfrey, of Bouillon in the Ardennes, a kinsman of the counts of Boulogne, and Duke of Lotharingen (Lorraine). In the service of the emperor Henry IV, the enemy or the victim of Hildebrand, he had been the first to mount the walls of Rome and cleave his way into the city; he might now hope that his crusading vow would be accepted as an atonement for his sacrilege. Speaking the Frank and Teutonic dialects with equal ease, he exercised by his bravery, his wisdom, and the uprightness of his life an influence which brought to his standard, it is said, not less than eighty thousand infantry and ten thousand horsemen, together with his brothers Baldwin and Eustace, Count of Boulogne.

Among the most conspicuous of Godfrey's colleagues was Hugh, Count of Vermandois. With him may be placed the Norman duke Robert, whose carelessness had lost him the crown of England, and who had now pawned his duchy for a pittance scarcely less paltry than that for which Esau bartered away his birthright. The number of the great chiefs who led the pilgrims from Northern Europe is completed with the names of Robert, Count of Flanders, and of Stephen, Count of Chartres, Troyes, and Blois.

Foremost, by virtue of his title and office, among the leaders of the southern bands was the papal legate Adhemar (Aymer) Bishop of Puy—a leader rather as guiding the counsels of the army than as gathering soldiers under his banner.

A hundred thousand horse and foot attested, we are told, the greatness, the wealth, and the zeal of Raymond, Count of Toulouse, lord of Auvergne and Languedoc, who had grown old in warfare.

Less tinged with the fanatical enthusiasm of his comrades, and certainly more cool and deliberate in his ambition, Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard, looked to the crusade as a means by which he might regain the vast regions extending from the Dalmatian coast to the northern shores of the Aegean. Nay, if we are to believe William of Malmesbury, he urged Urban to set forward the enterprise for the very purpose, partly, of thus recovering what he was pleased to regard as his inheritance, and in part of enabling the Pontiff to suppress all opposition in Rome. Guiscard had left his Apulian domains to a younger son, and Bohemond was resolved, it would seem, to add to his principality of Tarentum a kingdom which would make him a formidable rival of the Eastern Emperor.

Far above Bohemond rises his cousin Tancred, the son of the marquis Odo, surnamed the Good, and of Emma, the sister of Robert Guiscard.

In Tancred was seen the embodiment of those peculiar sentiments and modes of thought which gave birth to the crusades, and to which the crusades in their turn imparted marvellous strength and splendor.

The miserable remnant of three thousand men who escaped from the field of blood before the city of the Seljukian sultan found a refuge in Byzantine territory about the time when the better appointed armies of the crusaders were setting off on their eastward journey. The most disciplined of these troops set out with a vast following from the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle under Godfrey of Bouillon, who led them safely and without opposition to the Hungarian border. Here the armies of Hungary barred the way against the advance of a host at whose hands they dreaded a repetition of the havoc wrought by the lawless bands of Peter the Hermit and his self-chosen colleagues. Three weeks passed away in vain attempts to get over the difficulty. The Hungarian King demanded as a hostage Baldwin, the brother of the generaclass="underline" the demand was refused, and Godfrey put him to shame by surrendering himself. He asked only for a free passage and a free market; but although these were granted, it was not in his power to prevent some disorder and some depredations as his army or horde passed through the country. The mischief might have been much worse, had not the Hungarian cavalry, acting professedly as a friendly escort, but really as cautious warders, kept close to the crusading hosts.