Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/281

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 259 CHAPTER LVIII Origin and Numbers of the First Crusade — Characters of the Latin Princes — Their March to Constantinople — Policy of the Greek Emperor Alexins — Conquest of Nice, Antioch, and Jerusalem, hif the Franks — Deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre — Godfrey of Bouillon, first King of Jerusalem — Institutions of the French or Latin Kingdom About twenty years after the conquest of Jerusalem by theThearst TurkSj the holy sepulchre was visited by an hermit of the name 1095-ioM. of Peter, a native of Amiens, in the province of Picardy ^ in Hennit * France. His resentment and sympathy were excited by his own injuries and the oppression of the Christian name ; he mingled his tears with those of the patriarch, and earnestly inquired if no hopes of relief could be entertained from the Greek emperors of the East. The patriarch exposed the vices and weakness of the successors of Constantine. "I will rouse," exclaimed the hermit, "the martial nations of Europe in your cause;" and Europe was obedient to the call of the hermit. The astonished patriarch dismissed him with epistles of credit and complaint ; and no sooner did he land at Bari than Peter hastened to kiss the feet of the Roman Pontiff. His stature was small, his ap- pearance contemptible ; but his eye was keen and lively ; and he possessed that vehemence of speech which seldom fails to impart the persuasion of the soul.^ He was born of a gentle- 1 Whimsical enough is the origin of the nnme of Picards, and from thence of Picardie, which does not date earlier than A.D. 1200. It was an academical joke, an epithet first applied to the quarrelsome humour of those students, in the uni- versity of Paris, who came from the frontier of France and Flanders (Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p. 447 ; Longuerue, Description de la France, p. 54). ''William of Tyre (1. i. c. 11, p. 637, 638) thus describes the hermit: Pusillus, persona contemptibilis, vivacis ingenii, et oculum habens perspicacem gratumque, et sponte fluens ei non deerat eloquium. See Albert Aquensis, p. 185. Guibert, p. 482. Anna Comnena in Alexiad. 1. x. p. 284 [c. 5], &c. with Ducange's notes, p. 349. [In the writers who are contemporary with the First Crusade there is not a word of Peter the Hermit instigating Pope Urban, nor is he mentioned as present