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 neighbouring kingdoms or the Holy Land, the duties of the feudal tenure no longer subsisted; the voluntary service of the knights and their followers was 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.60

the princes

stanti

1096, Au

A.D. 1097,

Such were the troops, and such the readers, who assumed the March of cross for the deliverance of the holy sepulchre. As soon as to Conthey were relieved by the absence of the plebeian multitude, nople. A.D. they encouraged each other, by interviews and messages, to gust 15accomplish their vow and hasten their departure. Their wives May 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 neighbourhood of Constantinople, and from thence to begin their operations against the Turks. From the banks of the Meuse and the

6o On the curious subject 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 1. Titles of Honour, 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. 165-222), and M. de St. Palaye (Mémoires sur la Chevalerie). [Here the author anticipates a later age. At the time of the First Crusade, there was no chivalry, as here meant; knight signified a trooper.]

1

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 an 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 [Coloman] Carloman, 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 licence 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 and Sclavonia.

61

61 The Familia Dalmatice 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 maritime country as far as Trau and Salona (Katona, Hist. Crit. tom. iii. p. 195-207). [For the journey see Knapp, Reisen durch die Balkanhalbinsel während des Mittelalters, in the Mittheilungen der k. k. geograph. Gesellschaft in Wien, xxiii., 1880.]

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.62 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 valour of Tancred; and, if the Norman prince affected to spare the Greeks, he gorged his soldiers with the full plunder of an heretical castle. The nobles of France pressed forwards with the vain and thoughtless ardour 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.64 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

63 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, Géographie Ancienne, tom. i. p. 164). The sanjiak (now a pasha) 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 Impero Ottomano, p. 128).

63 In Pelagonia castrum hæreticum . . . spoliatum cum suis habitatoribus igne combussere. Nec id eis injuriâ contigit: quia illorum detestabilis sermo et cancer serpebat, jamque circumjacentes regiones suo pravo dogmate foedaverat (Robert. Mon. p. 36, 37). After coolly relating the fact, the archbishop Baldric adds, as a phrase, Omnes siquidem illi viatores, Judaeos, hæreticos, Saracenos sequaliter habent exosos; quos omnes appellant inimicos Dei (p. 92).

84 Αναλαβόμενος ἀπὸ Ῥώμης τὴν χρυσὴν τοῦ ̔Αγίου Πέτρου σημαίαν (Alexiad, l. x. p. 288 [c. 7]).

Policy of

the em

Alexius

A.D. 1096,

-A.D. 1097,

May

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 armour, who commanded the emperor to revere the general of the Latin Christians, the brother of the King of kings.65

In some Oriental tale I have read the fable of a shepherd, peror who was ruined by the accomplishment of his own wishes: he Comnenus. had prayed for water; the Ganges was turned into his grounds; December 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 Anna and by the Latin writers.67 In the council of Placentia, his ambassadors had solicited a moderate succour, 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 honour 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

65 'O Baσiλeus Tây Baσiλéwv [Anna, x. c. 7, ad init. in Hugo's letter or message to Alexius], καὶ ἀρχηγὸς τοῦ Φραγγικοῦ στρατεύματος ἅπαντος [ib. e. 7, med., in the announcement of the four and twenty knights to the Duke of Dyrrachium]. 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 Chrétiens.

66 Anna Comnena was born on the 1st of December, A.D. 1083, indiction vii. (Alexiad, 1. vi. p. 166, 167 [c. 8]). At thirteen, the time of the first crusade, she was nubile, and perhaps married to the younger Nicephorus Bryennius, whom she fondly styles τὸν ἐμὸν Καίσαρα (1. x. p. 295, 296 [c. 9]). Some moderns have imagined that her enmity to Bohemond [BaïμoûvTOS] was the fruit of disappointed love. In the transactions of Constantinople and Nice, her partial accounts (Alex. 1. x. xi. p. 283-317) may be opposed to the partiality of the Latins; but in their subsequent exploits she is brief and ignorant. [Cp. above, vol. 5, p. 537.]

67 In their views of the character and conduct of Alexius, Maimbourg has favoured 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.

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 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 incur-
able 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 pro-
vocations; prejudice is blind, hunger is deaf; and Alexius is
accused of a design to starve or assault the Latins on a danger-
ous post, on all sides encompassed with the waters.68 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 in-
sensibly 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 [Jan. 1097]

68 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 Blachernae [close to St. Callinicus], which in successive ages was restored by Justinian and Basil (Gyllius de Bosphoro Thracio, l. ii. c. 3; Ducange, C. P. Christiana, l. iv. c. 2, p.