LVIII. the frugal subsistence of weeks and months: the desolate CHAP. country no longer yielded a supply; and from that country they were at length excluded by the arms of the besieging Turks. Disease, the faithful companion of want, was envenomed by the rains of the winter, the summer heats, unwholesome food, and the close imprisonment of multitudes. The pictures of famine and pestilence are always the same, and always disgustful; and our imagination may suggest the nature of their sufferings and their resources. The remains of treasure or spoil were eagerly lavished in the purchase of the vilest nourishment; and dreadful must have been the calamities of the poor, since, after paying three marks of silver for a goat and fifteen for a lean camel,96 the count of Flanders was reduced to beg a dinner, and duke Godfrey to borrow an horse. Sixty thousand horses had been reviewed in the camp: before the end of the siege they were diminished to two thousand, and scarcely two hundred fit for service could be mustered on the day of battle. Weakness of body, and terror of mind, extinguished the ardent enthusiasm of the pilgrims; and every motive of honour and religion was subdued by the desire of life.97 Among the chiefs, three heroes may be found without fear or reproach: Godfrey of Bouillon was supported by his magnanimous piety; Bohemond by ambition and interest; and Tancred declared, in the true spirit of chivalry, that as long as he was at the head of forty knights, he would never relinquish the enterprise of Palestine. But the count of Tholouse and Provence was suspected of a voluntary indisposition: the duke of Normandy was recalled from the sea-shore by the censures of the church; Hugh the Great, though he led the vanguard of the battle, embraced an ambiguous opportunity of returning to France; and Stephen count of Chartres basely deserted the standard which he bore, and the council in which he presided. The soldiers were discouraged by 96 The value of an ox rose from five solidi (fifteen shillings) at Christmas to two marks (four pounds), and afterwards much higher: a kid or a lamb, from one shilling to eighteen of our present money: in the second famine, a loaf of bread, or the head of an animal, sold for a piece of gold. More examples might be produced; but it is the ordinary, not the extraordinary, prices, that deserve the notice of the philosopher. 97 Alii multi, quorum nomina non tenemus, quia deleta de libro vitæ præsenti operi non sunt inserenda (Will. Tyr. l. vi. c. 5, p. 715). Guibert (p. 518. 523) attempts to excuse Hugh the Great, and even Stephen of Chartres. LVIII. CHAP. the flight of William viscount of Melun, surnamed the Car penter, from the weighty strokes of his axe; and the saints were scandalized by the fall of Peter the Hermit, who, after arming Europe against Asia, attempted to escape from the penance of a necessary fast. Of the multitude of recreant warriors, the names (says an historian) are blotted from the book of life: and the opprobrious epithet of the rope-dancers was applied to the deserters who dropt in the night from the walls of Antioch. The emperor Alexius," who seemed to advance to the succour of the Latins, was dismayed by the assurance of their hopeless condition. They expected their fate in silent despair; oaths and punishments were tried without effect: and to rouse the soldiers to the defence of the walls, it was found necessary to set fire to their quarters. Legend of the Holy Lance, For their salvation and victory, they were indebted to the same fanaticism which had led them to the brink of ruin. In such a cause, and in such an army, visions, prophesies, and miracles, were frequent and familiar. In the distress of Antioch, they were repeated with unusual energy and success: St. Ambrose had assured a pious ecclesiastic, that two years of trial must precede the season of deliver ance and grace; the deserters were stopped by the presence and reproaches of Christ himself; the dead had promised to arise and combat with their brethren; the Virgin had obtained the pardon of their sins: and their confidence was revived by a visible sign, the seasonable and splendid discovery of the HOLY LANCE. The policy of their chiefs has on this occasion been admired, and might surely be excused; but a pious fraud is seldom produced by the cool conspiracy of many persons; and a voluntary impostor might depend on the support of the wise and the credulity of the people. Of the diocese of Marseilles, there was a priest of low cuning and loose manners, and his name was Peter Bartholemy. He presented himself at the door of the council-chamber, to disclose an apparition of St. Andrew, which had been thrice reiterated in his sleep, with a dreadful menace, if he presumed to suppress the commands of heaven. "At Antioch," said the apostle, "in the church of my brother St. Peter, 98 See the progress of the crusade, the retreat of Alexius, the victory of An tioch, and the conquest of Jerusalem, in the Alexiad, I. xi. p.317...327. Anna was so prone to exaggeration, that she magnifies the exploits of the Latins. LVIII. "near the high altar, is concealed the steel head of the lance CHAP. "that pierced the side of our Redeemer. In three days, "that instrument of eternal, and now of temporal, salvation, "will be manifest to his disciples. Search and ye shall find: "bear it aloft in battle; and that mystic weapon shall pene"trate the souls of the miscreants." The pope's legate, the bishop of Puy, affected to listen with coldness and distrust: but the revelation was eagerly accepted by count Raymond, whom his faithful subject, in the name of the apostle, had chosen for the guardian of the holy lance. The experiment was resolved; and on the third day, after a due preparation of prayer and fasting, the priest of Marseilles introduced twelve trusty spectators, among whom were the count and his chaplain; and the church-doors were barred against the impetuous multitude. The ground was opened in the appointed place; but the workmen, who relieved each other, dug to the depth of twelve feet without discovering the object of their search. In the evening, when count Raymond had withdrawn to his post, and the weary assistants began to murmur, Bartholemy, in his shirt, and without his shoes, boldly descended into the pit; the darkness of the hour and the place enabled him to secrete and deposit the head of a Saracen lance; and the first sound, the first gleam, of the steel, was saluted with a devout rapture. The holy lance was drawn from its recess, wrapt in a veil of silk and gold, and exposed to the veneration of the crusaders; their anxious suspense burst forth in a general shout of joy and hope, and the desponding troops were again inflamed with the enthusiasm of valour. Whatever had been the arts, and whatever might be the sentiments of the chiefs, they skilfully improved this fortunate revolution by every aid that discipline and devotion could afford. The soldiers were dismissed to their quarters with an injunction to fortify their minds and bodies for the approaching conflict, freely to bestow their last pittance on themselves and their horses, and to expect with the dawn of day the signal of victory. On the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul, the gates of Antioch were thrown open; a martial psalm, "Let the Lord arise, and let his enemies "be scattered!" was chaunted by a procession of priests and monks; the battle array was marshalled in twelve divisions, in honour of the twelve apostles; and the holy lance, in the Celestial CHAP. absence of Raymond, was entrusted to the hands of his chap LVIII. lain. The influence of this relic or trophy was felt by the servants, and perhaps by the enemies of Christ;99 and its potent energy was heightened by an accident, a stratagem, or a rumour, of a miraculous complexion. Three knights, in white garments and resplendent arms, either issued, or seemed to issue, from the hills: the voice of Adhemar, the pope's legate, proclaimed them as the martyrs St. George, St. Theodore, and St. Maurice; the tumult of battle allowed no time for doubt or scrutiny; and the welcome apparition dazzled the eyes or the imagination of a fanatic army. In the season of danger and triumph, the revelation of Bartholemy of Marseilles was unanimously asserted; but as soon as the temporary service was accomplished, the personal dignity and liberal alms which the count of Tholouse de rived from the custody of the holy lance, provoked the envy, and awakened the reason, of his rivals. A Norman clerk presumed to sift, with a philosophic spirit, the truth of the legend, the circumstances of the discovery, and the charac ter of the prophet; and the pious Bohemond ascribed their deliverance to the merits and intercession of Christ alone. For a while, the Provincials defended their national palladium with clamours and arms; and new visions condemned to death and hell the profane sceptics, who presumed to scrutinise the truth and merit of the discovery. The prevalence of incredulity compelled the author to submit his life and veracity to the judgment of God. A pile of dry faggots, four feet high, and fourteen long, was erected in the midst of the camp: the flames burnt fiercely to the eleva tion of thirty cubits; and a narrow path of twelve inches was left for the perilous trial. The unfortunate priest of Marseilles traversed the fire with dexterity and speed; but his thighs and belly were scorched by the intense heat; he expired the next day: and the logic of believing minds will pay some regard to his dying protestations of innocence and truth. Some efforts were made by the Provincials to substitute a cross, a ring, or a tabernacle, in the place of the holy lance, 99 The Mahometan Aboulmahasen (apud de Guignes, tom. ii. p. ii. p. 95.) is more correct in his account of the holy lance than the Christians, Anna Comnena and Abulpharagius: the Greek princess confounds it with a nail of the cross (1. xi. p. 326.) the Jacobite primate, with St. Peter's staff (p. 242). 100 Yet the CHAP. which soon vanished in contempt and oblivion." revelation of Antioch is gravely asserted by succeeding historians; and such is the progress of credulity, that miracles, most doubtful on the spot and at the moment, will be received with implicit faith at a convenient distance of time and space. LVIII. of the The prudence or fortune of the Franks had delayed their The state invasion till the decline of the Turkish empire.10 Under Turks and the manly government of the three first sultans, the king-caliphs of doms of Asia were united in peace and justice; and the in- Egypt. numerable armies which they led in person were equal in courage, and superior in discipline, to the Barbarians of the West. But at the time of the crusade, the inheritance of Malek Shaw was disputed by his four sons; their private ambition was insensible of the public danger; and, in the vicissitudes of their fortune, the royal vassals were ignorant, or regardless, of the true object of their allegiance. The twenty-eight emirs, who marched with the standard of Kerboga, were his rivals or enemies; their hasty levies were drawn from the towns and tents of Mesopotamia and Syria; and the Turkish veterans were employed or consumed in the civil wars beyond the Tigris. The caliph of Egypt embraced this opportunity of weakness and discord, to recover his ancient possessions; and his sultan Aphdal besieged Jerusalem and Tyre, expelled the children of Ortok, and restored in Palestine the civil and ecclesiastical authority of the Fatimites. 103 They heard with astonishment of the vast armies of Christians that had passed from Europe to Asia, and rejoiced in the sieges and battles which broke the power of the Turks, the adversaries of their sect and monarchy. But the same Christians were the enemies of the prophet; and from the overthrow of Nice and Antioch, 100 The two antagonists who express the most intimate knowledge and the strongest conviction of the miracle and of the fraud, are Raymond des Agiles, and Radulphus Cadomensis, the one attached to the count of Tholouse, the other to the Norman prince. Fulcherius Carnotensis presumes to say, audite fraudem et non fraudem! and afterwards, invenit lanceam, fallaciter occultatam forsitan. The rest of the herd are loud and strenuous. 101 See M. de Guignes (tom. ii. p. ii. p. 223, &c); and the articles of Barkiarok, Mohammed, Sangiar, in d'Herbelot. 102 The emir, or sultan Aphdal, recovered Jerusalem and Tyre, A. H. 489 (Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexandrin, p. 478. de Guignes, tom. i. p. 249. from Abulfeda and Ben Schounah). Jerusalem ante adventum vestrum recuperavimus, Turcos ejecimus, say the Fatimite ambassadors. |