CHAP. chasers completed the payment by the assurance LVIII. of their prayers. The cross, which was com Departure of the first 1096, March, monly sewed on the garment, in cloth or silk, was inscribed by some zealots on their skin; an hot iron, or indelible liquor, was applied to perpetuate the mark; and a crafty monk, who shewed the miraculous impression on his breast, was repaid with the popular veneration and the richest benefices of Palestine *. The fifteenth of August had been fixed in the Crusaders, council of Clermont for the departure of the A. D. pilgrims but the day was anticipated by the thoughtless and needy crowd of plebeians; and I May, &c. shall briefly dispatch the calamities which they inflicted and suffered, before I enter on the more serious and successful enterprise of the chiefs. Early in the spring, from the confines of France and Lorraine, above sixty thousand of the popu, lace of both sexes flocked round the first missionary of the crusade, and pressed him with clamorous importunity to lead them to the holy sepulchre. The hermit, assuming the character, without the talents or authority, of a general, impelled or obeyed the forward impulse of his votaries along the banks of the Rhine and Danube. Their wants and numbers soon compelled them to separate, and his lieutenant, Walter the Pennyless, a valiant though needy soldier, conducted a vanguard of pilgrims, whose condi tion *Some instances of these stigmata are given in the Esprit des Croisades, (tom. iii. p. 169, &c.), from authors whom have not seen. LVIII. tion may be determined from the proportion of CHAP. eight horsemen to fifteen thousand foot. The example and footsteps of Peter were closely pursued by another fanatic, the monk Godescal, whose ser, mons had swept away fifteen or twenty thousand peasants from the villages of Germany. Their rear was again pressed by an herd of two hundred thousand, the most stupid and savage refuse of the people, who mingled with their devotion a brutal licence of rapine, prostitution, and drunkenness. Some counts and gentlemen, at the head of three thousand horse, attended the motions of the multitude to partake in the spoil; but their genuine leaders (may we credit such folly ?) were a goose and a goat, who were carried in the front, and to whom these worthy Christians ascribed an infusion of the divine Spirit *. Of these, and of other bands of enthusiasts, the first and most casy warfare was against the Jews, the murderers of the Son of God. In the trading cities of the Moselle and the Rhine, their colonies were numerous and rich; and they enjoyed, under the protection of the emperor and the bishops, the free exercise of their religion t. At Verdun, Treves, * Fuit et aliud scelus detestabile in hac congregatione pedestris populi stulti et vesanæ levitatis, anserem quendam divino Spiritu asserebant afflatum, et capellam non minus eodem repletam, et has sibi duces secundæ viæ fecerant, &c. (Albert. Aquensis, l. 1. c. 31. p. 196.). Had these peasants founded an empire, they might have introduced, as in Egypt, the worship of animals, which their philosophic descendants would have glossed over with some specious and subtle allegory. Benjamin of Tudela describes the state of his Jewish brethren from Cologne along the Rhine: they were rich, genejous, learned, hospitable, and lived in the eager hope of the Messiah. LVIII. CHAP. Treves, Mentz, Spires, Worms, many thousands of that unhappy people were pillaged and massacred *; nor had they felt a more bloody stroke since the persecution of Hadrian. A remnant was saved by the firmness of their bishops, who accepted a feigned and transient conversion; but the more obstinate Jews opposed their fanaticism to the fanaticism of the Christians, barricadoed their houses, and precipitating themselves, their families, and their wealth, into the rivers or the flames, disappointed the malice, or at least the avarice, of their implacable foes. Their de in Hun gary and Asia, A. D. s096. Between the frontiers of Austria, and the scat struction of the Byzantine monarchy, the crusaders were compelled to traverse an interval of six hundred miles; the wild and desolate countries of Hungary and Bulgaria. The soil is fruitful, and intersected with rivers; but it was then covered with morasses and forests, which spread to a boundless extent, whenever man has ceased to exercise his dominion over the earth. Both nations had imbibed the rudiments of Christianity; the Hungarians were ruled by their native princes; the Messiah. (Voyage, tom. i. p. 243-245, par. Baratier.). In seventy years (he wrote about A. D. 1170) they had recoverfrom these massacres. *These massacres and depredations on the Jews, which were renewed at each crusade, are coolly related. It is true, that St Bernard (epist. 363, tom. i. p. 329.) admonishes the Oriental Franks, non sunt persequendi Judæi, non sunt trucidandi. The contrary doctrine had been preached by a rival monk. See the contemporary description of Hungary in Otho of Frisingen, 1. ii. c. 31. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. vi. p. 665, 666. LVIII. the Bulgarians by a lieutenant of the Greek em- CHAP. peror; but on the slightest provocation, their ferocious nature was rekindled, and ample provo cation was afforded by the disorders of the first pilgrims. Agriculture must have been unskilful and languid among a people, whose cities were built of reeds and timber, which were deserted in the summer-season for the tents of hunters and shepherds. A scanty supply of provisions was rudely demanded, forcibly scized, and greedily consumed; and on the first quarrel, the crusaders gave a loose to indignation and revenge. But their ignorance of the country, of war, and of discipline, exposed them to every snare. The Greek præfect of Bulgaria commanded a regular force; at the trumpet of the Hungarian king, the eighth or the tenth of his martial subjects bent their bows, and mounted on horseback; their policy was insidious, and their retaliation on these pious robbers was unrelenting and bloody*. About a third of the naked fugitives, and the hermit Peter was of the number, escaped to the Thracian mountains; and the emperor, who respected the pilgrimage and succour of the Latins, conducted them by secure and easy journies to Constantinople, and advised them to wait the arrival of their * The old Hungarians, without excepting Turotzius, are ill informed of the first crusade, which they involve in a single passage. Katona, like ourselves, can only quote the writers of France; but he compares with local science the ancient and modern geography. Ante portam Cyperon, is Sopron, or Poson; Mallevilla, Zemlin; Fluvius Maroe, Savus; Lintax, Leith; Mesebroch, or Marseburg, Ouar, or Moson; Tollenburg, Pragg (De Regibus Hungariæ, tom. iii. p. 19-53.). CHAP. their brethren. For a while LVIII. For a while they remembered their faults and losses; but no sooner were they revived by the hospitable entertainment, than their venom was again inflamed; they stung their benefactor, and neither gardens, nor palaces, nor churches, were safe from their depredations. For his own safety, Alexius allured them to pass over to the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus; but their blind impetuosity soon urged them to desert the station which he had assigned, and to rush headlong against the Turks, who occupied the road of Jerusalem. The hermit, conscious of his shame, had withdrawn from the camp to Constantinople; and his lieutenant, Walter the Penny less, who was worthy of a better command, attempted, without success, to introduce some order and prudence among the herd of savages. They separated in quest of prey, and themselves fell an easy prey to the arts of the Sultan. By a rumour that their foremost companions were rioting in the spoils of his capital, Soliman tempted the main body to descend into the plain of Nice; they were overwhelmed by the Turkish arrows; and a pyramid of bones informed their companions of the place of their defeat. Of the first crusaders, three hundred thousand had already perished, before a single city was rescued from the infidels, before. their graver and more noble brethren had completed the preparations of their enterprise †. * Anna Comnena (Alexius, 1. x. p. 287.) describes this oçar κολωνος as a mountain, ύψηλον και βαθος και πλατος αξιολογώτατον. In the siege of Nice, such were used by the Franks themselves as the materials of a wall. |