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

From the duties of slaughter these disciples of the Lamb of God passed to those of devotion. Bareheaded and barefooted, clad in a robe of pure white linen, in an ecstasy of joy and thankfulness mingled with profound contrition, Godfrey entered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and knelt at the tomb of his Lord. With groans and tears his followers came, each in his turn, to offer his praises for the divine mercy which had vouchsafed this triumph to the armies of Christendom. With feverish earnestness they poured forth the vows which bound them to sin no more, and the excitement of prayer and slaughter, perhaps of both combined, led them to see everything which might be needed to give effect to the closing scene of this appalling tragedy. As the saints had arisen from their graves when the Son of Man gave up the ghost on Calvary, so the spirits of the pilgrims who had died on the terrible journey came to take part in the great thanksgiving. Foremost among them was Adhemar of Puy, rejoicing in the prayers for forgiveness and the resolutions of repentance which promised a new era of peace upon earth and of good-will toward all men.

With departed saints were mingled living men who deserved all the honor which might be paid to them. The backsliding of the hermit Peter was blotted out of the memory of those who remembered only the fiery eloquence which had first called them to their now triumphant pilgrimage, and the zeal which had stirred the heart of Christendom to cut short the tyranny of the Unbeliever in the birthland of Christianity. The assembled throng fell down at his feet, and gave thanks to God, who had vouchsafed to them such a teacher. His task was done, and in the annals of the time Peter is heard of no more.

On this dreadful day Tancred had spared three hundred captives to whom he had given a standard as a pledge of his protection and a guarantee of their safety. Such misplaced mercy was a crime in the eyes of the crusaders. The massacre of the first day may have been aggravated by the ungovernable excitement of victory; but it was resolved that on the next day there should be offered up a more solemn and deliberate sacrifice. The men whom Tancred had spared were all murdered; and the wrath of Tancred was roused, not by their fate, but by an act which called his honor into question. The butchery went on with impartial completeness, old and young, decrepit men and women, mothers with their infants, boys and girls, young men and maidens in the bloom of their vigor, all were mowed down, and their bodies mangled until heads and limbs were tossed together in awful chaos. A few were hidden away by Raymond of Toulouse; his motive, however, was not mercy, but the prospects of gain in the slave market. After this great act of faith and devotion the streets of the Holy City were washed by Saracen prisoners; but whether these were butchered when their work was ended we are not told.

Four centuries and a half had passed away, when these things were done, since Omar had entered Jerusalem as a conqueror and knelt outside the Church of Constantine, that his followers might not trespass within it on the privileges of the Christians. The contrast is at the least marked between the Caliph of the Prophet and the children of the Holy Catholic Church.

When, the business of the slaughter being ended, the chiefs met to choose a king for the realm which they had won with their swords, one man only appeared to whom the crown could fitly be offered. Baldwin was lord of Edessa; Bohemond ruled at Antioch; Hugh of Vermandois and Stephen of Chartres had returned to Europe; Robert of Flanders cared not to stay; the Norman Robert had no mind to forfeit the duchy which he had mortgaged; and Raymond was discredited by his avarice, and in part also by his traffic in the visions of Peter Barthelemy. But in the city where his Lord had worn the thorny crown, the veteran leader who had looked on ruthless slaughter without blanching and had borne his share in swelling the stream of blood would wear no earthly diadem nor take the title of king. He would watch over his Master's grave and the interests of his worshippers under the humble guise of Baron and Defender of the Holy Sepulchre; and as such, a fortnight after his election, Godfrey departed to do battle with the hosts of the Fatimite Caliph of Egypt, who now felt that the loss of Jerusalem was too high a price for the humiliation of his rivals. The conflict took place at Ascalon, and the Fatimite army was miserably routed. Godfrey returned to Jerusalem, to hang the sword and standard of the Sultan before the Holy Sepulchre and to bid farewell to the pilgrims who were now to set out on their homeward journey. He retained, with three hundred knights under Tancred, only two thousand foot soldiers for the defence of his kingdom; and so ended the first act in the great drama of the crusades.