written in her history, and especially in her history at the date of the
eleventh century, how England found her point of departure and her first
elements of success in the long labor she performed, in order to arrive,
in 1688, at a free, and, in our days, at a liberal government.

France pursued her end by other means and in the teeth of other fortunes.
She always desired and always sought for free government under the form
of constitutional monarchy; and in following her history, step by step,
there will be seen, often disappearing and ever re-appearing, the efforts
made by the country for the accomplishment of her hope.  Why then did not
France sooner and more completely attain what she had so often attempted?
Amongst the different causes of this long miscalculation, we will dwell
for the present only on the historical reason just now indicated: France
did not find, as England did, in the primitive elements of French society
the conditions and means of the political system to which she never
ceased to aspire.  In order to obtain the moderate measure of internal
order, without which society could not exist; in order to insure the
progress of her civil laws and her material civilization; in order even
to enjoy those pleasures of the mind for which she thirsts so much,--
France was constantly obliged to have recourse to the kingly authority
and to that almost absolute monarchy which was far from satisfying her
even when she could not do without it, and when she worshipped it with an
enthusiasm rather literary than political, as was the case under Louis
XIV.  It was through the refined rather than profound development of her
civilization, and through the zeal of her intellectual movement, that
France was at length impelled not only towards the political system to
which she had so long aspired, but into the boundless ambition of the
unlimited revolution which she brought about and with which she
inoculated all Europe.  It is in the first steps towards the formation of
the two societies, French and English, and in the elements, so very
different, of their earliest existence, that we find the principal cause
for their long-continued diversity in institutions and destinies.

"In 1823, forty-seven years ago, after having studied," says M. Guizot,
"in my Essays upon a Comparative History of France and England, the great
fact which we have just now attempted to make clearly understood, I
concluded my labor by saying, 'Before our revolution, this difference
between the political fates of France and England might have saddened a
French-man: but now, in spite of the evils we have suffered and in spite
of those we shall yet, perhaps, suffer, there is no room, so far as we
are concerned, for such sadness.  The advances of social equality and the
enlightenments of civilization in France preceded political liberty; and
it will thus be the more general and the purer.  France may reflect,
without regret, upon any history: her own has always been glorious, and
the future promised to her will assuredly recompense her for all she has
hitherto lacked.' In 1870, after the experiences and notwithstanding the
sorrows of my long life, I have still confidence in our country's future.
Never be it forgotten that God helps only those who help themselves and
who deserve his aid."




CHAPTER XVI.----THE CRUSADES, THEIR ORIGIN AND THEIR SUCCESS.

Amongst the great events of European history, none was for a longer time
in preparation or more naturally brought about than the Crusades.
Christianity, from her earliest days, had seen in Jerusalem her sacred
cradle; it had been, in past times, the home of her ancestors, the Jews,
and the centre of their history; and, afterwards, the scene of the life,
death, and resurrection of her Divine Founder.  Jerusalem became, more
and more, the Holy City.  To go to Jerusalem, to visit the Mount of
Olives, Calvary, and the tomb of Jesus, was, in their most evil days, and
in the midst of their obscurity and their martyrdoms, a pious passion
with the early Christians.  When, under Constantine, Christianity had
ascended from the cross to the throne, Jerusalem had fresh attractions
for Christian faith and Christian curiosity.  Temples covered and
surrounded the Holy Sepulchre; and at Bethlehem, Nazareth, Mount Tabor,
and nearly all the places which Jesus had consecrated by His presence and
His miracles were seen to rise up churches, chapels, and monuments
dedicated to the memory of them.  The Emperor Constantine's mother, St.
Helena, was, at seventy-eight years of age, the first royal pilgrim to
the holy places.  After the Pagan revival, vainly attempted by the
Emperor Julian, the number and zeal of the Christian visitors to
Jerusalem were redoubled.  At the beginning of the fifth century, St.
Jerome wrote, from his retreat at Bethlehem, that Judea overflowed with
pilgrims, and that, round about the Holy Sepulchre, were heard sung, in
divers tongues, the praises of the Lord.  He, however, gave but scant
encouragement to his friends to make the trip.  "The court of heaven," he
wrote to St. Paulinus, "is as open in Britain as at Jerusalem;" and the
disorder which sometimes accompanied the numerous assemblages of pilgrims
became such that several of the most illustrious fathers of the Church,
and amongst others St. Augustine and St. Gregory of Nyssa, exerted
themselves to dissuade the faithful.  "Take no thought," said Augustine,
"for long voyages; go where your faith is; it is not by ship, but by
love, that we go to Him who is everywhere."

Events soon rendered the pilgrimage to Jerusalem difficult, and for some
time impossible.  At the commencement of the seventh century, the Greek
empire was at war with the sovereigns of Persia, successors of Cyrus and
chiefs of the religion of Zoroaster.  One of them, Khosroes II., invaded
Judea, took Jerusalem, led away captive the inhabitants, together with
their patriarch, Zacharias, and even carried off to Persia the precious
relic which was regarded as the wood of the true cross, and which had
been discovered, nearly three centuries before, by the Empress Helena,
whilst excavations were making on Calvary for the erection of the church
of the Holy Sepulchre.  But fourteen years later, after several victories
over the Persians, the Greek emperor, Heraclius, retook Jerusalem, and
re-entered Constantinople in triumph with the coffer containing the
sacred relic.  He next year (in 629) carried it back to Jerusalem, and
bore it upon his own shoulders to the top of Calvary; and on this
occasion was instituted the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
Great was the joy in Christendom; and the pilgrimages to Jerusalem
resumed their course.

But precisely at this epoch there appeared an enemy far more formidable
for the Christians than the sectaries of Zoroaster.  In 622 Mahomet
founded Islamism; and some years after his death, in 638, the second of
the khalifs, his successors, Omar, sent two of his generals, Khaled and
Abou-Obeidah, to take Jerusalem.  For to the Mussulmans, also, Jerusalem
was a holy city.  Mahomet, it was said, had been thither; it was thence,
indeed, that he had started on his nocturnal ascent to heaven.  On
approaching the walls, the Arabs repeated these words from the Koran:
"Enter we the holy land which God hath promised us."  The siege lasted
four months.  The Christians at last surrendered, but only to Omar in
person, who came from Medina to receive their submission.  A capitulation
concluded with their patriarch, Sophronius, guaranteed them their lives,
their property, and their churches.  "When the draft of the treaty was
completed, Omar said to the patriarch, 'Conduct me to the temple of
David.'  Omar entered Jerusalem preceded by the patriarch, and followed
by four thousand warriors, followers of the Prophet, wearing no other
arms but their swords.  Sophronius took him, first of all, to the Church
of the Resurrection.  'Be-hold,' said he, 'the temple of David.'  'Thou
sayest not true,' said Omar, after a few moments' reflection; 'the
Prophet gave me a description of the temple of David, and it tallieth not
with the building I now see.'  The patriarch then conducted him to the
Church of Sion.  'Here,' said he, 'is the temple of David.'  'It is a
lie,' rejoined Omar, and went his way, directing his steps towards the
gate named Bab-Mohammed.  The spot on which now stands the Mosque of Omar
was so encumbered with filth that the steps leading to the street were
covered with it, and that the rubbish reached almost to the top of the
vault.  'You can only get in here by crawling,' said the patriarch.  'Be
it so,' answered Omar.  The patriarch went first; Omar, with his people,
followed; and they arrived at the space which at this day forms the
forecourt of the mosque.  There every one could stand upright.  After
having turned his eyes to right and left, and attentively examined the
place, 'Allah alchbar!' cried Omar; here is the temple of David,
described to me by the Prophet.'"

He found the Sakhra (the rock which forms the summit of Mount Moriah,)
and which, left alone after the different destructions of the different
temples, became the theme of a multitude of traditions and legends,
(Jewish and Mussulman) covered with filth, heaped up there by the
Christians through hatred of the Jews.  "Omar spread his cloak over the
rock, and began to sweep it; and all the Mussulmans in his train followed
his example."  (_Le Temple de Jerusalem,_ a monograph, pp. 73-75, by
Count Melchior de Vogue, ch. vi.) The Mosque of Omar rose up on the site
of Solomon's temple.  The Christians retained the practice of their
religion in their churches, but they were obliged to conceal their
crosses and their sacred books.  The bell no longer summoned the faithful
to prayer; and the pomp of ceremonies was forbidden them.  It was far
worse when Omar, the most moderate of Mussulman fanatics, had left
Jerusalem.  The faithful were driven from their houses, and insulted in
their churches; additions were made to the tribute they had to pay to the
new masters of Palestine; they were prohibited from carrying arms and
riding on horseback; a girdle of leather, which they might not lay aside,
was their badge of servitude; their conquerors brooked not even that the
Christians should speak the Arab tongue, reserved for disciples of the
Koran; and the Christian people of Jerusalem had not the right of
nominating their own patriarch without the intervention of the Saracens.

From the seventh to the eleventh century the situation remained very much
the same.  The Mussulmans, khalifs of Egypt or Persia, continued in
possession of Jerusalem; and the Christians, native inhabitants or
foreign visitors, continued to be oppressed, harassed, and humiliated
there.  At two periods their condition was temporarily better.  At the
commencement of the ninth century, Charlemagne reached even there with
the greatness of his mind and of his power.  "It was not only in his own
land and his own kingdom," says Eginhard, "that he scattered those
gratuitous largesses which the Greeks call alms; but beyond the seas, in
Syria, in Egypt, in Africa, at Jerusalem, at Alexandria, at Carthage,
wherever he knew that there were Christians living in poverty, he had
compassion on their misery, and he delighted to send them money."  In one
of his capitularies of the year 810 we find this paragraph: "Alms to be
sent to Jerusalem to repair the churches of God."  "If Charlemagne was so
careful to seek the friendship of the kings beyond the seas, it was above
all in order to obtain for the Christians living under their rule help
and relief.  .  .  .  He kept up so close a friendship with Haroun-al-
Raschid, king of Persia, that this prince preferred his good graces to
the alliance of the sovereigns of the earth.  Accordingly, when the
ambassadors whom Charles had sent, with presents, to visit the sacred
tomb of our divine Saviour, and the site of the resurrection, presented
themselves before him, and expounded to him their master's wish, Haroun
did not content himself with entertaining Charles's request; he wished,
besides, to give up to him the complete proprietorship of those places
hallowed by the certification of our redemption," and he sent him, with
the most magnificent presents, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre.  At the
end of the same century, another Christian sovereign, far less powerful
and less famous, John Zimisces, emperor of Constantinople, in a war
against the Mussulmans of Asia, penetrated into Galilee, made himself
master of Tiberias, Nazareth, and Mount Tabor, received a deputation
which brought him the keys of Jerusalem, "and we have placed," he says
himself, "garrisons in all the district lately subjected to our rule."
These were but strokes of foreign intervention, giving the Christians of
Jerusalem gleams of hope rather than lasting diminution of their
miseries.  However, it is certain that, during this epoch, pilgrimages
multiplied, and were often accomplished without obstacle.  It was from
France, England, and Italy that most of the pilgrims went, and some of
them wrote, or caused to be written, an account of their trip,--amongst
others the Italian Saint Valentine, the English Saint Willibald, and the
French Bishop Saint Arculf, who had as companion a Burgundian hermit
named Peter, a singular resemblance in quality and name to the zealous
apostle of the Crusade three centuries later.  The most curious of these
narratives is that of a French monk, Bernard, a pilgrim of about the year
870.  "There is at Jerusalem," says he, "a hospice where admittance is
given to all who come to visit the place for devotion's sake, and who
speak the Roman tongue; a church, dedicated to St. Mary, is hard by the
hospice, and possesseth a very noble library, which it oweth to the zeal
of the Emperor Charles the Great."  This pious establishment had attached
to it fields, vineyards, and a garden situated in the valley of
Jehosaphat.

But whilst there were a few isolated cases of Christians thus going to
satisfy in the East their pious and inquisitive zeal, the Mussulmans,
equally ardent as believers and as warriors, carried Westward their creed
and their arms, established themselves in Spain, penetrated to the very
heart of France, and brought on, between Islamism and Christianity, that
grand struggle in which Charles Martel gained, at Poitiers, the victory
for the Cross.  It was really a definitive victory, and yet it did not
end the struggle; the Mussulmans remained masters in Spain, and continued
to infest Southern France, Italy, and Sicily, preserving even, at certain
points, posts which they used as starting-points for distant ravages.
Far then from calming down and resulting in pacific relations, the
hostility between the two races became more and more active and
determined; everywhere they opposed, fought, and oppressed one another,
inflamed one against the other by the double feelings of faith and
ambition, hatred and fear.  To this general state of affairs came to be
added, about the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh century,
incidents best calculated to aggravate the evil.  Hakem, khalif of Egypt
from 996 to 1021, persecuted the Christians, especially at Jerusalem,
with all the violence of a fanatic and all the capriciousness of a
despot.  He ordered them to wear upon their necks a wooden cross five
pounds in weight; he forbade them to ride on any animal but mules or
asses; and, without assigning any motive for his acts, he confiscated
their goods and carried off their children.  It was told to him one day
that, when the Christians assembled in the temple at Jerusalem to
celebrate Easter, the priests of the church rubbed balsam-oil upon the
iron chain which held up the lamp over the tomb of Christ, and afterwards
set fire, from the roof, to the end of the chain; the fire stole down to
the wick of the lamp and lighted it; then they shouted with admiration,
as if fire from heaven had come down upon the tomb, and they glorified
their faith.  Hakem ordered the instant demolition of the church of the
Holy Sepulchre, and it was accordingly demolished.  Another time a dead
dog had been laid at the door of a mosque; and the multitude accused the
Christians of this insult.  Hakem ordered them all to be put to death.
The soldiers were preparing to execute the order when a young Christian
said to his friends, "It were too grievous that the whole Church should
perish; it were better that one should die for all; only promise to bless
my memory year by year."  He proclaimed himself alone to blame for the
insult, and was accordingly alone put to death.  It is from this story of
the historian William of Tyre, that Tasso, in his _Jerusalem Delivered,_
has drawn the admirable episode of Olindo and Sophronia; a fine example,
and not the only one, of an act of tyranny and an act of virtue inspiring
a great poet with the idea of a masterpiece.  "All the deeds of Hakem
were without motive," says the Arab historian Makrisi, "and the dreams
suggested to him by his frenzy are incapable of reasonable
interpretation."

These and many other similar stories reached the West, spread amongst the
Christian people and roused them to pity for their brethren in the East
and to wrath against the oppressors.  And it was at a critical period,
in the midst of the pious alarms and desires of atonement excited by the
expectation of the end of the world a thousand years after the coming of
the Lord, that the Christian population saw this way opened for
purchasing remission of their sins by delivering other Christians from
suffering, and by avenging the wrongs of their creed.  On all sides arose
challenges and appeals to the warlike ardor of the faithful.  The
greatest mind of the age, Gerbert, who had become Pope Sylvester II.,
constituted himself interpreter of the popular feeling.  He wrote, in the
name of the Church of Jerusalem, a letter addressed to the universal
Church: "To work, then, soldier of Christ!  Be our standard-bearer and
our champion!  And if with arms thou canst not do so, aid us with thy
words, thy wealth.  What is it, pray, that thou givest, and to whom,
pray, dost thou give?  Of thine abundance thou givest a small matter, and
thou givest to Him who hath freely given thee all thou possessest; but He
will not accept freely that which thou shalt give; for he will multiply
thine offering and will pay it back to thee hereafter."  Some years after
Gerbert, another great mind, the greatest among the popes of the middle
ages, Gregory VII., proclaimed an expedition, at the head of which he
would place himself, to go and deliver Jerusalem and the Christians of
the East from the insults and the tyranny of the infidels.

Such being the condition of facts and minds, pilgrimages to Jerusalem
became, from the ninth to the eleventh century, more and more numerous
and considerable.  "It would never have been believed," says the
contemporary chronicler Raoul Glaber, "that the Holy Sepulchre could
attract so prodigious an influx.  First the lower classes, then the
middle, afterwards the most potent kings, the counts, the marquises, the
prelates, and lastly, what had never heretofore been seen, many women,
noble or humble, undertook this pilgrimage."  In 1026, William
Traillefer, count of Angouleme; in 1028, 1035, and 1039, Foulques the
Black, count of Anjou; in 1035, Robert the Magnificent, duke of Normandy,
father of William the Conqueror; in 1086, Robert the Frison, count of
Flanders; and many other great feudal lords quitted their estates, or,
rather, their states, to go and--not deliver, not conquer, but--simply
visit the Holy Land.  It was not long before great numbers were joined to
great names.  In 1054, Liedbert, bishop of Cambrai, started for Jerusalem
with a following of three thousand Picard or Flemish pilgrims; and in
1064, the archbishop of Mayence and the bishops of Spire, Cologne,
Bamberg, and Utrecht set out on their way from the borders of the Rhine
with more than ten thousand Christians behind them.  After having passed
through Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Thrace, Constantinople, Asia Minor,
and Syria, they were attacked in Palestine by hordes of Arabs, were
forced to take refuge in the ruins of an old castle, and were reduced to
capitulation; and when at last, "preceded by the rumors of their battles
and their perils, they arrived at Jerusalem, they were received in
triumph by the patriarch, and were conducted, to the sound of timbrels
and with the flare of torches, to the church of the Holy Sepulchre.  The
misery they had fallen into excited the pity of the Christians of Asia;
and, after having lost more than three thousand of their comrades, they
returned to Europe to relate their tragic adventures and the dangers of a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land."  (_Histoire des Croisades,_ by M. Michaud,
t. i.  p. 62.)

Amidst this agitation of Western Christendom, in 1076, two years after
Pope Gregory VII. had proclaimed his approaching expedition to the Holy
Land, news arrived in Europe to the effect that the most barbarous of
Asiatics and of Mussulmans, the Turks, after having first served and then
ruled the khalifs of Persia, and afterwards conquered the greater part of
the Persian empire, had hurled themselves upon the Greek empire, invaded
Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, and lately taken Jerusalem, where they
practised against the Christians, old inhabitants or foreign visitors,
priests and worshippers, dreadful cruelties and intolerable exactions,
worse than those of the Persian or Egyptian khalifs.

It often happens that popular emotions, however profound and general,
remain barren, just as in the vegetable world many sprouts appear at the
surface of the soil and die without having grown and fructified.  It is
not sufficient for the bringing about of great events and practical
results that popular aspirations should be merely manifested; it is
necessary, further, that some great soul, some powerful will, should make
itself the organ and agent of the public sentiment, and bring it to
fecundity by becoming its personification.  The Christian passion, in the
eleventh century, for the deliverance of Jerusalem and the triumph of the
Cross was fortunate in this respect.  An obscure pilgrim, at first a
soldier, then a married man and father of several children, then a monk
and a vowed recluse, Peter the Hermit, who was born in the neighborhood
of Amiens, about 1030, had gone, as so many others had, to Jerusalem "to
say his prayers there."  Struck disconsolate at the sight of the
sufferings and insults undergone by the Christians, he had an interview
with Simeon, patriarch of Jerusalem, who "recognizing in him a man of
discretion and full of experience in affairs of the world, set before him
in detail all the evils with which the people of God, in the holy city,
were afflicted.  'Holy father,' said Peter to him, 'if the Roman Church
and the princes of the West were informed, by a man of energy and worthy
of belief, of all your calamities, of a surety they would essay to apply
some remedy thereto by word and deed.  Write, then, to our lord the pope
and to the Roman Church, and to the kings and princes of the West, and
strengthen your written testimony by the authority of your seal.  As for
me, I shrink not from taking upon me a task for the salvation of my soul;
and with the help of the Lord I am ready to go and seek out all of them,
solicit them, show unto them the immensity of your troubles, and pray
them all to hasten on the day of your relief.'"  The patriarch eagerly
accepted the pilgrim's offer; and Peter set out, going first of all to
Rome, where he handed to Pope Urban II. the patriarch's letters, and
commenced in that quarter his mission of zeal.  The pope promised him not
only support, but active co-operation when the propitious moment for it
should arrive.  Peter set to work, being still the pilgrim everywhere, in
Europe, as well as at Jerusalem.  "He was a man of very small stature,
and his outside made but a very poor appearance; yet superior powers
swayed this miserable body; he had a quick intellect and a penetrating
eye, and he spoke with ease and fluency.  .  .  .  We saw him at that
time," says his contemporary Guibert de Nogent, "scouring city and town,
and preaching everywhere; the people crowded round him, heaped presents
upon him, and celebrated his sanctity by such great praises that I
remember not that like honor was ever rendered to any other person.  He
displayed great generosity in the disposal of all things that were given
him.  He restored wives to their husbands, not without the addition of
gifts from himself, and he re-established, with marvellous authority,
peace and good understanding between those who had been at variance.  In
all that he did or said he seemed to have in him something divine,
insomuch that people went so far as to pluck hairs from his mule to keep
as relics.  In the open air he wore a woollen tunic, and over it a serge
cloak which came down to his heels; he had his arms and feet bare; he ate
little or no bread, and lived chiefly on wine and fish."

In 1095, after the preaching errantry of Peter the Hermit, Pope Urban II.
was at Clermont, in Auvergne, presiding at the grand council, at which
thirteen archbishops and two hundred and five bishops or abbots were met
together, with so many princes and lay-lords, that "about the middle of
the month of November the towns and the villages of the neighborhood were
full of people, and divers were constrained to have their tents and
pavilions set up amidst the fields and meadows, notwithstanding that the
season and the country were cold to an extreme."  The first nine sessions
of the council were devoted to the affairs of the Church in the West; but
at the tenth Jerusalem and the Christians of the East became the subject
of deliberation.  The Pope went out of the church wherein the Council was
assembled and mounted a platform erected upon a vast open space in the
midst of the throng.  Peter the Hermit, standing at his side, spoke
first, and told the story of his sojourn at Jerusalem, all he had seen of
the miseries and humiliations of the Christians, and all he himself had
suffered there, for he had been made to pay tribute for admission into
the Holy City, and for gazing upon the spectacle of the exactions,
insults, and tortures he was recounting.  After him Pope Urban II.
spoke, in the French tongue, no doubt, as Peter had spoken, for he was
himself a Frenchman, as the majority of those present were, grandees and
populace.  He made a long speech, entertaining upon the most painful
details connected with the sufferings of the Christians of Jerusalem,
"that royal city which the Redeemer of the human race had made
illustrious by His coming, had honored by His residence, had hallowed by
His passion, had purchased by His death, had distinguished by His burial.
She now demands of you her deliverance .  .  .  men of France, men from
beyond the mountains, nations chosen and beloved of God, right valiant
knights, recall the virtues of your ancestors, the virtue and greatness
of King Charlemagne and your other kings; it is from you above all that
Jerusalem awaits the help she invokes, for to you, above all nations,
God has vouchsafed signal glory in arms.  Take ye, then, the road to
Jerusalem for the remission of your sins, and depart assured of the
imperishable glory which awaits you in the kingdom of heaven."

From the midst of the throng arose one prolonged and general shout, "God
willeth it!  God willeth it!"  The Pope paused for a moment; and then,
making a sign with his hand as if to ask for silence, he continued, "If
the Lord God were not in your souls, ye would not all have uttered the
same words.  In the battle, then, be those your war-cry, those words that
came from God; in the army of the Lord let nought be heard but that one
shout, 'God willeth it!  God willeth it!'   We ordain not, and we advise
not, that the journey be undertaken by the old or the weak, or such as be
not suited for arms, and let not women set out without their husbands or
their brothers; let the rich help the poor; nor priests nor clerks may go
without the leave of their bishops; and no layman shall commence the
march save with the blessing of his pastor.  Whosoever hath a wish to
enter upon this pilgrimage, let him wear upon his brow or his breast the
cross of the Lord, and let him, who, in accomplishment of his desire,
shall be willing to march away, place the cross behind him, between his
shoulders; for thus he will fulfil the precept of the Lord, who said,
'He that doth not take up his cross and follow Me, is not worthy of Me.'"

[Illustration: "God willeth it!"----383]

The enthusiasm was general and contagious, as the first shout of the
crowd had been; and a pious prelate, Adhemar, bishop of Puy, was the
first to receive the cross from the Pope's hands.  It was of red cloth or
silk, sewn upon the right shoulder of the coat or cloak, or fastened on
the front of the helmet.  The crowd dispersed to assume it and spread it.

Religious enthusiasm was not the only, but the first and the determining
motive of the crusade.  It is to the honor of humanity, and especially to
the honor of the French nation, that it is accessible to the sudden sway
of a moral and disinterested sentiment, and resolves, without prevision
as well as without premeditation, upon acts which decide, for many a long
year, the course and the fate of a generation, and, it may be, of a whole
people.  We have seen in our own day, in the conduct of populace,
national assemblies, and armies, under the impulse not any longer of
religious feeling, but of political and social agitation, France thus
giving herself up to the rush of sentiments, generous indeed and pure,
but without the least forecast touching the consequences of the ideas
which inspired them or the acts which they entailed.  It is with nations
as with armies; the side of glory is that of danger; and great works are
wrought at a heavy cost, not only of happiness, but also of virtue.  It
would be wrong, nevertheless, to lack respect for and to speak evil of
enthusiasm: it not only bears witness to the grandeur of human nature, it
justly holds its place and exercises its noble influence in the course of
the great events which move across the scene of human errors and vices,
according to the vast and inscrutable design of trod.  It is quite
certain that the crusaders of the eleventh century, in their haste to
deliver Jerusalem from the Mussulmans, were far from foreseeing that, a
few centuries after their triumph, Jerusalem and the Christian East would
fall again beneath the yoke of the Mussulmans and their barbaric
stagnation; and this future, had they caught but a glimpse of it, would
doubtless have chilled their zeal.  But it is not a whit the less certain
that, in view of the end, their labor was not in vain; for, in the
panorama of the world's history, the crusades marked the date of the
arrest of Islamism, and powerfully contributed to the decisive
preponderance of Christian civilization.

[Illustration: The Four Leaders of the First Crusade----385]

To religious enthusiasm there was joined another motive less
disinterested, but natural and legitimate, which was the still very vivid
recollection of the evils caused to the Christians of the West by the
Mussulman invasions in Spain, France, and Italy, and the fear of seeing
them begin again.  Instinctively war was carried to the East to keep it
from the West, just as Charlemagne had invaded and conquered the country
of the Saxons to put an end to their inroads upon the Franks.  And this
prudent plan availed not only to give the Christians of the West a hope
of security, it afforded them the pleasure of vengeance.  They were about
to pay back alarm for alarm, and evil for evil, to the enemy from whom
they had suffered in the same way; hatred and pride, as well as piety,
obtained satisfaction.

There is moreover great motive power in a spirit of enterprise and a
taste for adventure.  Care-for-nothingness is one of man-kind's chief
diseases, and if it plays so conspicuous a part in comparatively
enlightened and favored communities, amidst the labors and the enjoyments
of an advanced civilization, its influence was certainly not less in
times of intellectual sloth and harshly monotonous existence.  To escape
therefrom, to satisfy in some sort the energy and curiosity inherent in
man, the people of the eleventh century had scarcely any resource but
war, with its excitement and distant excursions into unknown regions.
Thither rushed the masses of the people, whilst the minds which were
eager, above everything, for intellectual movement and for knowledge,
thronged, on the mountain of St. Genevieve, to the lectures of Abelard.
Need of variety and novelty, and an instinctive desire to extend their
views and enliven their existence, probably made as many crusaders as the
feeling against the Mussulmans and the promptings of piety.

[Illustration: Crusaders on the March----386]

The Council of Clermont, at its closing on the 28th of November, 1095,
had fixed the month of August in the following year, and the feast of the
Assumption, for the departure of the crusaders for the Holy Land; but the
people's impatience did not brook this waiting, short as it was in view
of the greatness and difficulties of the enterprise.  As early as the 8th
of March, 1096, and in the course of the spring three mobs rather than
armies set out on the crusade, with a strength, it is said, of eighty or
one hundred thousand persons in one case, and of fifteen or twenty
thousand in the other two.  Persons, not men, for there were amongst them
many women and children, whole families, in fact, who had left their
villages, without organization and without provisions, calculating that
they would be competent to find their own way, and that He who feeds the
young ravens would not suffer to die of want pilgrims wearing His cross.
Whenever, on their road, a town came in sight, the children asked if that
were Jerusalem.  The first of these mobs had for its head Peter the
Hermit himself, and a Burgundian knight called Walter _Havenought_; the
second had a German priest named Gottschalk; and the third a Count Emico,
of Leiningen, potent in the neighborhood of Mayence.  It is wrong to call
them heads, for they were really nothing of the kind; their authority was
rejected, at one time as tyrannical, at another as useless.  "The
grasshoppers," was the saying amongst them in the words of Solomon's
proverbs, "have no king, and yet they go in companies."  In crossing
Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the provinces of the Greek empire, these
companies, urged on by their brutal passions or by their necessities and
material wants, abandoned themselves to such irregularities that, as they
went, princes and peoples, instead of welcoming them as Christians, came
to treat them as enemies, of whom it was necessary to get rid at any
price.  Peter the Hermit and Gottschalk made honorable and sincere
efforts to check the excesses of their following, which were a source of
so much danger; but Count Emico, on the contrary, says William of Tyre,
"himself took part in the plunder, and incited his comrades to crime."
Thus, at one time taking the offensive, at another compelled to defend
themselves against the attacks of the justly irritated inhabitants, these
three immense companies of pilgrims, these disorderly volunteers, with
great difficulty arrived, after enormous losses, at the gates of
Constantinople.  Either through fear or through pity, the Greek emperor,
Alexis (or Alexius) Comnenus, permitted them to pitch their camp there;
"but before long, plenty, idleness, and the sight of the riches of
Constantinople brought once more into the camp license, indiscipline, and
a thirst after brigandage.  Whilst awaiting the war against the
Mussulmans, the pilgrims pillaged the houses, the palaces, and even the
churches in the outskirts of Byzantium.  To deliver his capital from
these destructive guests, Alexis furnished them with vessels, and got
them shipped off across the Bosphorus."

[Illustration: The Assault on St. Jean d'Acre----386]

Whilst the crusade was commencing under these sad auspices, chieftains of
more sense and better obeyed were preparing to give it another character
and superior fortunes.  Two great and real armies were forming in the
north, the centre, and the south of France, and a third in Italy, amongst
the Norman knights who had founded there the kingdom of Naples and
Sicily, just before their countryman, William the Bastard, conquered
England.  The first of these armies had for its chief, Godfrey de
Bouillon, duke of Lorraine, whom all his contemporaries have described as
the model of a gallant and pious knight.  He was the son of Eustace II.,
count of Boulogne, and "the lustre of nobility," says Raoul of Caen,
chronicler of his times, "was enhanced in his case by the splendor of the
most exalted virtues, as well in affairs of the world as of heaven.  As
to the latter, he distinguished himself by his generosity towards the
poor, and his pity for those who had committed faults.  Furthermore, his
humility, his extreme gentleness, his moderation, his justice, and his
chastity were great; he shone as a light amongst the monks, even more
than as a duke amongst the knights.  And, nevertheless, he could also do
the things which are of this world, fight, marshal the ranks, and extend
by arms the domains of the Church.  In his boyhood he learned to be
first, or one of the first, to strike the foe; in youth he made it his
habitual practice; and in advancing age he forgot it never.  He was so
perfectly the son of the warlike Count Eustace, and of his mother, Ida de
Bouillon, a woman full of piety, and versed in literature, that at sight
of him even a rival would have been forced to say of him, 'For zeal in
war, behold his father; for serving God, behold his mother.'  The second
army, consisting chiefly of crusaders from Southern France, marched under
the orders of Raymond IV., count of Toulouse, the oldest chieftain of the
crusade, who still, however, united the ardor of youth with the
experience of ripe age and the stubbornness of the graybeard.  At the
side of the Cid he had fought, and more than once beaten the Moors in
Spain.  He took with him to the East his third wife, Elvira, daughter of
Alphonso VI., king of Castile, as well as a very young child he had by
her, and he had made a vow, which he fulfilled, that he would return no
more to his country, and would fight the infidels to the end of his days,
in expiation of his sins.  He was discreet though haughty, and not only
the richest but the most economical of the crusader-chiefs:
"Accordingly," says Raoul of Caen, "when all the rest had spent their
money, the riches of Count Raymond made him still more distinguished.
The people of Provence, who formed his following, did not lavish their
resources, but studied economy even more than glory," and "his army,"
adds Guibert of Nogent, "showed no inferiority to any other, save so far
as it is possible to reproach the inhabitants of Provence touching their
excessive loquacity."

Bohemond, prince of Tarento, commanded the third army, composed
principally of Italians and warriors of various origins come to Italy to
share in the exploits and fortunes of his father, the celebrated Robert
Guiscard, founder of the Norman kingdom of Naples, who was at one time
the foe, and at another the defender, of Pope Gregory VII., and who died
in the island of Cephalonia just as he was preparing to attempt the
conquest of Constantinople.  Bohemond had neither less ambition nor less
courage and ability than his father.  "His appearance," says Anna
Comnena, "impressed the eye as much as his reputation astounded the mind;
his height surpassed that of all his comrades; his blue eyes gleamed
readily with pride and anger; when he spoke you would have said he had
made eloquence his study; and when he showed himself in armor, you might
have believed that he had never done aught but handle lance and sword.
Brought up in the school of Norman heroes, be concealed calculations of
policy beneath the exterior of force, and, although he was of a haughty
disposition, he knew how to be blind to a wrong when there was nothing to
be gained by avenging it.  He had learned from his father to regard as
foes all whose dominions and riches he coveted; and he was not restrained
by fear of God, or by man's opinions, or by his own oaths.  It was not
the deliverance of the tomb of Christ which fired his zeal or decided him
upon taking up the cross; but, as he had vowed eternal enmity to the
Greek emperors, he smiled at the idea of traversing their empire at the
head of an army, and, full of confidence in his fortunes, he hoped to
make for himself a kingdom before arriving at Jerusalem."

Bohemond had as friend and faithful comrade his cousin Tancred de
Hauteville, great-grandson, through his mother, Emma, of Robert Guiscard,
and, according to all his contemporaries, the type of a perfect Christian
knight, neither more nor less.  "From his boyhood," says Raoul of Caen,
his servitor before becoming his biographer, "he surpassed the young by
his skill in the management of arms, and the old by the strictness of his
morals.  He disdained to speak ill of whoever it might be, even when ill
had been spoken of himself.  About himself he would say nought, but he
had an insatiable desire to give cause for talking thereof.  Glory was
the only passion that moved that young soul; yet was it disquieted within
him, and he suffered great anxiety from thinking that his knightly
combats seemed contrary to the precepts of the Lord.  The Lord bids us
give our coat and our cloak to him who would take them from us; whereas
the knight's part is to strip all that remains from him from whom he hath
already taken his coat and his cloak.  These contradictory principles
benumbed sometimes the courage of this man so full of propriety; but when
the declaration of Pope Urban had assured remission of all their sins to
all Christians who should go and fight the Gentiles, then Tancred awoke
in some sort from his dream, and this new opportunity fired him with a
zeal which cannot be expressed.  He therefore made preparations for his
departure; but, accustomed from his infancy to give to others before
thinking of himself, he entered upon no great outlay, but contented
himself with collecting in sufficient quantity knightly arms, horses,
mules, and provisions necessary for his company."

With these four chieftains, who have remained illustrious in history,--
that grave wherein small reputations are extinguished,--were associated,
for the deliverance of the Holy Land, a throng of feudal lords, some
powerful as well as valiant, others valiant but simple knights; Hugh,
count of Vermaudois, brother of Philip I., king of France; Robert of
Normandy, called Shorthose, son of William the Conqueror; Robert, count
of Flanders; Stephen, count of Blois; Raimbault, count of Orange;
Baldwin, count of Hainault; Raoul of Beaugency; Gerard of Roussillon, and
many others whose names contemporary chroniclers and learned moderns have
gathered together.  Not one of the reigning sovereigns of Europe, kings
or emperors, of France, England, Spain, or Germany, took part in the
first crusade.  It was the feudal nation, great and small, castle owners
and populace, who rose in mass for the deliverance of Jerusalem and the
honor of Christendom.

These three great armies of crusaders got on the march from August to
October, 1096, wending their way, Godfrey de Bouillon by Germany,
Hungary, and Bulgaria; Bohemond by the south of Italy and the
Mediterranean; and Count Raymond of Toulouse by Northern Italy, Friuli,
and Dalmatia.  They arrived one after the other in the empire of the East
and at the gates of Constantinople.  Godfrey de Bouillon was the first to
appear there, and the Emperor Alexis Comnenus learned with dismay that
other armies of crusaders would soon follow that which was already so
large.  It was not long before Bohemond and Raymond appeared.  Alexis
behaved towards these formidable allies with a mixture of pusillanimity
and haughtiness, promises and lies, caresses and hostility, which
irritated without intimidating them, and rendered it impossible for them
to feel any confidence or conceive any esteem.  At one time he was
thanking them profusely for the support they were bringing him against
the infidels; at another he was sending troops to harass them on their
road, and, when they reached Constantinople, he demanded that they should
swear fealty and obedience to him, as if they were his own subjects.
One day he was refusing them provisions and attempting to subdue them by
famine; and the next he was lavishing feasts and presents upon them.  The
crusaders, on their side, when provisions fell short, spread themselves
over the country and plundered it without scruple; and, when they
encountered hostile troops of Greeks, charged them without warning.  When
the emperor demanded of them fealty and homage, the count of Toulouse
answered that he had not come to the East in search of a master.  Godfrey
do Bouillon, after resisting every haughty pretension, being as just as
he was dignified, acknowledged that the crusaders ought to restore to the
emperor the towns which had belonged to the empire, and an arrangement to
that effect was concluded between them.  Bohemond had a proposal
submitted to Godfrey to join him in attacking the Greek empire and taking
possession at once of Byzantium; but Godfrey rejected the proposal, with
the reminder that he had come only to fight the infidels.  The emperor,
fully informed of the greediness as well as ambition of Bohemond,
introduced him one day into a room full of treasures.  "Here," said
Bohemond, "is wherewith to conquer kingdoms."  Alexis had the treasures
removed to Bohemond's, who at first refused, and ended by accepting them.
It is even said that he asked the emperor for the title of Grand Domestic
or of General of the Empire of the East.  Alexis, who had held that
dignity and who knew that it was the way to the throne, gave the Norman
chieftain a present refusal, with a promise of it on account of future
services to be rendered by him to the empire and the emperor.

The chiefs of the crusade were not alone in treating with disdain this
haughty, wily, and feeble sovereign.  During a ceremony at which some
French princes were doing homage to the emperor, a Count Robert of Paris
went and sat down free-and-easily beside him; when Baldwin, count of
Hainault, took the intruder by the arm, saying, "When you are in a
country you must respect its masters and its customs."  "Verily,"
answered Robert, "I hold it shocking that this jackanapes should be
seated, whilst so many noble captains are standing yonder."  When the
ceremony was over, the emperor, who had, no doubt, heard the words,
wished to have an explanation; so he detained Robert, and asked him who
and whence he was.  "I am a Frenchman," quoth Robert; "and of noble
birth.  In my country there is, hard by a church, a spot repaired to by
such as burn to prove their valor.  I have been there often without any
one's daring to present himself before me."  The emperor did not care to
take up this sort of challenge, and contented himself with replying to
the warrior, "If you there waited for foes without finding any, you are
now about to have what will satisfy you.  I have, however, a piece of
advice to give you; don't put yourself at the head or the tail of the
army; keep in the middle.  I have learned how to fight with Turks; and
that is the best place you can choose."  The crusaders and the Greeks
were mutually contemptuous, the former with a ruffianly pride, the latter
with an ironical and timid refinement.

This posture, on either side, of inactivity, ill-will, and irritation,
could not last long.  On the approach of the spring of 1097, the crusader
chiefs and their troops, first Godfrey de Bouillon, then Bohemond and
Tancred, and afterwards Count Raymond of Toulouse, passed the Bosphorus,
being conveyed across either in their own vessels or those of the Emperor
Alexis, who encouraged them against the infidels, and at the same time
had the infidels supplied with information most damaging to the
crusaders.  Having effected a junction in Bithynia, the Christian chiefs
resolved to go and lay siege to Nicaea, the first place, of importance,
in possession of the Turks.  Whilst marching towards the place they saw
coming to meet then, with every appearance of the most woful destitution,
Peter the Hermit, followed by a small band of pilgrims escaped from the
disasters of their expedition, who had passed the winter, as he had, in
Bithynia, waiting for more fortunate crusaders.  Peter, affectionately
welcomed by the chiefs of the army, recounted to them "in detail," says
William of Tyre, "how the people, who had preceded them under his
guidance, had shown themselves destitute of intelligence, improvident,
and unmanageable at the same time; and so it was far more by their own
fault than by the deed of any other that they had succumbed to the weight
of their calamities."  Peter, having thus relieved his heart and
recovered his hopes, joined the powerful army of crusaders who had come
at last; and, on the 15th of May, 1097, the siege of Nicaea began.

The town was in the hands of a Turkish sultan, Kilidge-Arslan, whose
father, Soliman, twenty years before, had invaded Bithynia and fixed his
abode at Nicrea.  He, being informed of the approach of the crusaders,
had issued forth, to go and assemble all his forces; but he had left
behind his wife, his children, and his treasures, and he had sent
messengers to the inhabitants, saying, "Be of good courage, and fear not
the barbarous people who make show of besieging our city; to-morrow,
before the seventh hour of the day, ye shall be delivered from your
enemies."  And he did arrive on the 16th of May, says the Armenian
historian, Matthias of Edessa, at the head of six hundred thousand
horsemen.  The historians of the crusaders are infinitely more moderate
as to the number of their foes; they assign to Kilidge-Arslan only fifty
or sixty thousand men, and their testimony is far more trustworthy, being
that of the victors.  In any case, the Christians and the Turks fought
valiantly for two days under the walls of Niccea, and Godfrey de Bouillon
did justice to his fame for valor and skill by laying low a Turk
"remarkable amongst all," says William of Tyre, "for his size and
strength, whose arrows caused much havoc in the ranks of our men."
Kilidge-Arslan, being beaten, withdrew to collect fresh troops, and,
after six weeks' siege, the crusaders believed themselves on the point of
entering Nicaea as masters, when, on the 26th of June, they saw floating
on the ramparts the standard of the Emperor Alexis.  Their surprise was
the greater in that they had just written to the emperor to say that the