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 256 THE DECLINE AND FALL have kissed the tomb of their Redeemer. Princes and prelates abandoned the care of their dominions ; and the numbers of these pious caravans were a prelude to the armies which marched in the ensuing age under the banner of the cross. About thirty years before the first crusade, the archbishop of Mentz, with the bishops of Utrecht, Bamberg, and Ratisbon, undertook this laborious journey from the Rhine to the Jordan ; and the multi- tude of their followers amounted to seven thousand persons. At Constantinople, they were hospitably entertained by the emperor ; but the ostentation of their wealth provoked the as- sault of the wild Arabs ; they drew their swords with scrupulous reluctance, and sustained a siege in the village of Capernaum, till they were rescued by the venal protection of the Fatimite emir. After visiting the holy places, they embarked for Italy, but only a remnant of two thousand arrived in safety in their native land. Ingulphus, a secretary of William the Conqueror, was a companion of this pilgrimage ; he observes that they sallied from Normandy, thirty stout and well-appointed horse- men ; but that they repassed the Alps, twenty miserable palmers, with the staff in their hand, and the wallet at their back.^*^ After the defeat of the Romans, the tranquillity of the Conquest of Fatimite caliphs was invaded by the Turks.^i One of the th?TurS' ^ lieutenants of Malek Shah, Atsiz the Carizmian, marched into Syria at the head of a powerful army, and reduced Damascus pTimn - by famine and the sword. Hems, and the other cities of the ^™"*-' province, acknowledged the caliph of Bagdad and the sultan of Persia ; and the victorious emir advanced without resistance to the banks of the Nile ; the Fatimite was preparing to fly into the heart of Africa ; but the negroes of his guard and the inhabitants of Cairo made a desperate sally, and repulsed the Turk from the confines of Egypt. In his retreat, he indulged the licence of slaughter and rapine ; the judge and notaries of Jerusalem were invited to his camp ; and their execution was followed by the massacre of three thousand citizens. The cruelty or the defeat of Atsiz was soon punished by the sultan Toucush, the brother of Malek Shah, who, with a higher title and more formidable powers, asserted the dominion of Syria and ^t* Baronius (a.d. 1064, No. 43-56) has transcribed the greater part of the ori- ginal narratives of Ingulphus, Marianus, and Lambertus. [Descriptions of the Holy Land by pilgrims of the 12th centuj-y, translated into English, will be found in vols. iv. and v. of the Library of the Palestine Pilgrims" Text Society.] «iSee Elmacin (Hist. Saracen, p. 349, 350) and Abulpharagius (Dynast, p. 237, vers. Pocock). M. de Guignes (Hist, des Huns, torn. iii. part i. p. 215, 216) adds the testimonies, or rather the names, of Abulfeda and Novairi.