Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/336

 o 14 THE DECLINE AND FALL The kingdom Without this indulgence, the conqueror would have almost of Jerusalem. i r ^ AD. 1099-U87 been stripped of his infant kingdom, which consisted only of Jerusalem and Jaffa, with about twenty villages and towns of the adjacent country. ^-"^ Within this narrow verge, the Ma- hometans were still lodged in some impregnable castles ; and the husbandman, the trader, and the pilgrims were exposed to daily and domestic hostility. By the arms of Godfrey himself, and of the two Baldwins, his brother and cousin, who succeeded to the throne, the Latins breathed with more ease and safety ; and at length they equalled, in the extent of their dominions, though not in the millions of their subjects, the ancient princes of Judah and Israel. ^-'^ After the reduction of the maritime cities of Laodicea, Tripoli, Tyre, and Ascalon,^^" which were powerfully assisted by the fleets of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, and even of Flanders and Norway,^-- the range of sea-coast from Scan- deroon to the borders of Egypt was possessed by the Christian pilgrims. If the prince of Antioch ^^'^ disclaimed his supremacy, i^swillerm. Tyr. 1. x. 19. The Historia HierosoWraitana of Jacobus a Vitri- aco (1. i. c. 21-50) and the Secreta Fidelium Crucis of Marinus Sanutus (1. iii. p. i) describe the state and conquests of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. [The work of Marinus (edited in Bongarsius, ii. p. i s^i/.) was written A.D. 1306-1321. This Marinus Sanutus is distinguished as senior from his later namesake, author of the Chronicon Venetum. The first Book of the work of James de Vitry is printed in Bongarsius, i. p. 1047 si^q., along with Bk. iii., which is by a different author. Bk. ii. seems never to have been printed since the old edition of Moschus, 1597. For the history of the kingdom of Jerusalem, cp. below, p. 322, note i.] i^An actual muster, not including the tribes of Levi and Benjamin, gave David an army of 1.300,000, or 1,574,000 fighting men ; which, with the addition of women, children, and slaves, may imply a population of thirteen millions, in a country sixty leagues in length and thirty broad. The honest and rational Le Clerc (Comment, on 2 Samuel, xxiv. and i Chronicles, xxi.)jestuat angusto in limite, and mutters his suspicion of a false transcript, — a dangerous suspicion ! 1-" These sieges are related, each in its proper place, in the great history of Villiam of Tyre, from the ixth to the xviiith book, and more briefly told by Bernar- dus Thesaurarius (de Acquisitione Terrte Sanctae, c. 89-98, p. 732-740). Some domestic facts are celebrated in the Chronicles of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, in the vith, ixth, and xiith tomes of Muratori. [Baldwin I. took Tripoli in 1109 and gave it to Bertram, son of Raymond of Toulouse. Tyre surrendered in 1124. The year 1143 may be taken as the central year after which the kingdom begins to decline and the Christians have to fight not for conquest but for defence. Ascalon, however, was won ten years later (1153). In 1152 the County of Edessa was surrendered to Manuel Comnenus.] i^Quidam populus de insulis occidentis egressus, et maxime de ea parte quae Norvegia diciiur. William of Tyre (1. xi. c. 14, p. 804) marks their course per Britannicum mare et Calpen to the siege of Sidon. 129 [For the history of the principality of Antioch, which deserves more attention than it has received, see E. Rey's R6sum6 chronologique de la histoire des princes d'Antioche, in the Re'ue de I'Orient Latin, iv. 321 S(/i/. (1896). The BeHa Antiochena of Gualterius Cancellarius was printed in Bongarsius (vol. i.), but an improved text is published in the Rccueil, vol. v. p. 81 sg>}. and there is a new ed. by Hagenmeyer (1896).]