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; 78 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 labour 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 reinforcement; some bands of adven

78 Alexias, l. x. p. 283 [c. 5], 305 [c. 11]. 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. [Sangeles would be a near enough equivalent for St. Gilles, but it is Isangeles; and the form of the corruption seems to have been determined by an etymology complimentary to the count,-iodyyeλos, angelic. A reader, ignorant of the pronunciation of modern Greek, might easily do injustice to Anna. The modern Greek alphabet has no letters equivalent to b and d (B represents v, and is aspirated, dh); and in order to reproduce these sounds they resort to the devices of μm and VT. Thus Robert is quite correctly Ρομπέρτος, and Γοντοφρέ is a near transliteration of Godfrey (Godefroi).]

turers were drawn from Spain, Lombardy, and England; 79 and from the distant bogs and mountains of Ireland or Scotland 80 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 vapours, of a Syrian sun. They consumed, with heedless prodigality, their stores of water and provisions; 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.81

Nice. A.D.

I have expatiated with pleasure on the first steps of the Siege of crusaders, as they paint the manners and character of Europe; 1097, May but I shall abridge the tedious and uniform narrative of their 20 (19)

79 William of Malmesbury (who wrote about the year 1130) has inserted in his history (1. 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).

80 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 Malmesbury expressly mentions the Welsh and Scots, &c. (1. iv. p. 133), who quitted, the former venationem saltuum, the latter familiaritatem pulicum.

81 This cannibal hunger, sometimes real, more frequently an artifice or a lie, may be found in Anna Comnena (Alexias, 1. x. p. 288 [c. 7]), 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. [In the Romance of Richard Coeur de Lion (edited by Weber) Richard eats the heads of Saracens.]

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14-June

blind achievements, which were performed by strength and are described by ignorance. From their first station in the neighbourhood 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,s2 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 valour; but their valour 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 belfry or moveable turret, artificial fire, and the catapult and balist, the sling, and the cross-bow for the casting of stones and darts.83 In the space of seven weeks much labour

82 His Musulman appellation of Soliman is used by the Latins, and his character is highly embellished by Tasso. His Turkish name of Kilidge-Arslan (A.. 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). [This is not quite correct. Sulaiman died in 1086. After an interregnum of six years Kilij-Arslan, his son, succeeded in 1092, and reigned till 1106. The western historians confuse the two.]

83 On the fortifications, engines, and sieges of the middle ages, see Muratori (Antiquitat. Italia, tom. ii. dissert. xxvi. p. 452-524). The belfredus, from whence our belfry, was the moveable tower of the ancients (Ducange, tom. i. p. 608). [See description of the berefridus in the Itinerarium regis Ricardi, iii. c. 6 (ed. Stubbs), and of the кplopóрos xeλrn in Anna Comnena, xiii. c. 3; they are the same engine. Compare on the whole subject, Oman, Art of War, ii. p. 131 sqq.]