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 OF THE EOMAN EMPIKE 301 tion difficult and dangerous. Indolence or weakness had pre- vented the Franks from investing the entire circuit ; and the perpetual freedom of two gates relieved the wants, and recruited the garrison, of the city. At the end of seven months, after the ruin of their cavalry, and an enormous loss by famine, desertion, and fatigue, the progress of the crusaders was imperceptible, and their success remote, if the Latin Ulysses, the artful and ambitious Bohemond, had not employed the arms of cunning and deceit. The Christians of Antioch were numerous and discontented : Phirouz, a Syrian renegado, had acquired the (Timr] favour of the emir, and the command of three towers; and the merit of his repentance disguised to the Latins, and perhaps to himself, the foul design of perfidy and ti-eason. A secret cor- respondence, for their mutual interest, was soon established between Phirouz and the prince of Tarento ; and Bohemond declared in the council of the chiefs that he could deliver the city into their hands. But he claimed the sovereignty of Antioch as the reward of his service ; and the proposal which had been rejected by the envy, was at length extorted from the distress, of his equals. The nocturnal surprise was executed by the French and Norman princes, who ascended in person the scaling-ladders that were thrown from the walls ; their new proselyte, after the murder of his too scrupulous brother, embraced and introduced the servants of Christ : the army rushed through the gates ; and the Moslems soon found that, although mercy was hopeless, resistance was impotent. But the citadel still refused to surrender ; and the victors them- selves were speedily encompassed and besieged by the innumer- able forces of Kerboga, prince of Mosul, who, with twenty-eight Turkish emirs, advanced to the deliverance of Antioch. Five and twenty days the Christians spent on the verge of destruction; and the proud lieutenant of the caliph and the sultan left them only the choice of servitude or death.^^ In this extremity they victory of the CFIlSd.uSI'S collected the relics of their strength, sallied from the town, and ad. loss,' 1 -1 1 T 111 •'^^^ 28 in a single memorable day anniliilated or dispersed the host of Turks and Arabians, which they might safely report to have consisted of six hundred thousand men.^^ Their supernatui-al 93 After mentioning the distress and humble petition of the Franks, Abulpharagius adds the haughty reply of Codbuka, or Kerboga [Kawam ad-Dawla (pillar of the realm) Kurbugha] ; " Non evasuri estis nisi per gladium " (Dynast, p. 242). [In the Chanson d'Antioche, Kurbugha is mysteriously called Carbaran d'O/ifer/ic] ^ In describing the host of Kerboga, most of the Latin historians, the author of the Gesta (p. 17), Robert Monachus (p. 56), Baldric (p. iii), Fulcherius Carno- tensis (p. 392), Guibert (p. 512), William of Tyre (1. vi. c. iii. p. 714), Bernard