Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/659

Rh CRUSADES 025 of aiD under painted a goose and a goat, symbols of the mysterious faith of Gnostics and Paulicians. These undisciplined multitudes turned fiercely upon the Jews, who were massacred in the streets of Verdun, Treves, and the great Rhenish cities, until the emperor interfered and took them under his protection. Of the followers of Peter 7000 only, it is said, reached Constantinople. These by the orders of the Emperor Alexius were at once conveyed across the Bosphorus, and there, with the bands of Walter the Pennyless, fell into a trap laid for them by the Seljukian Sultan David, surnamed Kilidj Arslan, the Sword of the Lion. A heap of bones alone remained to tell the story of their destruction, when the hosts under Godfrey came thither on their march to Palestine. These had advanced unopposed as far as the Hungarian border, where three weeks were lost in negotiations with the Hungarian king, who dreaded a repetition of the violence which his people had suffered at the hands of the rabble led by Peter and the moneyless Walter. With Stephen of Chartres, Robert of Flanders, and Robert of Normandy, Hugh of Vermandois had set out to make his way through Italy, and taken ship at Bari. Wrecked on the coast between Palos and Durazzo, he was detained at the latter place until the pleasure of the Emperor Alexius should be known. Alexius at once ordered that he should be brought to Constantinople, and so charmed his prisoner by the gracious manner which he could put on or off at will, that Hugh not only paid him homage and declared himself his man, but promised so a far as he could to get his colleagues to follow his example. The tidings of Hugh s detention roused the wrath of Godfrey, who, having in vain demanded his release, marched from Philippopolis, and appeared before the walls of Constantinople at Christmas 1096. Alexius saw before him a mighty host ; another not less formidable was on its way, he was told, under Bohemond and Tancred; and Bohemond, as he knew, claimed by right of inheritance no small part of his empire. These swarms he had brought upon his land by his appeals for the aid of Western Christendom, and he was now anxious at one moment to rid himself of their presence, at another to win the submis sion of the crusading chiefs, and so obtain a hold on their future conquests. At length a compact was made by which they gave him their fealty so long only as they remained within his borders, and pledged themselves to restore those of their conquests which had been recently wrested from the empire, while on his part he promised to supply them with food and to protect all pilgrims passing through his dominions. Bohemond, on reaching Constan tinople, was indignant when he learnt that his colleagues had become vassals of the emperor ; but he soon found that he must at least appear to follow their example, and he was repaid by a splendid bribe from Alexius, who adopted Godfrey as his son. With Raymond of Toulouse Alexius had a harder task. This chief, who scarcely regarded himself as the vassal even of the French king, refused to do more than be the emperor s friend on equal terms, even though Bohemond threatened that, if the quarrel came to blows, he should be on the side of Alexius. The latter, however, soon saw through the temper of Raymond ; and the harmony which followed this dispute was so thorough that Anna Comnena could speak of him as shining among the barbarians as the sun among the stars of heaven. It was not until the Feast of Pentecost, 1097, that the last of the bands of Latin pilgrims was conveyed to the Asiatic shore. During the whole interval the risk of conflict between the Latins and Greeks had been great. Between them there was in truth a radical opposition. The crusading chiefs hated the idea of a central authority, and clung to the right of private war as the dearest of their privileges. Of public law they could scarcely be said to know anything. The Greeks, on the other hand, were ready to put up with a large amount of corruption in their rulers so long as these secured to them the protection of person and property. Among the Latins, again, the clergy, having been brought by Hildebrand and Damiani under the yoke of celibacy, had become a close order or caste, which shrunk from the notion of allegiance to any temporal master. As a rule the Greek priests were married ; and as they owned the authority of the emperor, they were despised by their Western brethren for their cowardice. In short, there was nothing to bring the two peoples together, and everything to exasperate the suspicion and hatred which had grown up between them. Whatever may have been the numbers of the crusaders Battle of (and the chaplain of Count Baldwin could speak of them Doryleeum. as six millions), they found themselves on the eastern shore of the Bosphorus confronted by a formidable adversary in Kilidj Arslan, who, retreating with his horse men to the mountains, swooped down upon the Christians, by whom his capital city of Nice (Nikaia) was vainly invested for seven weeks. At length the city was sur rendered, not to the crusaders but to Alexius, and the former, advancing on their eastward march, were again confronted by the Turks near the Phrygian Dorylseum. The battle, desperately contested, ended in the complete defeat of the latter ; but the son of Kilidj Arslan, hasten ing on before the. crusaders as they marched to Cogni, Erekli, and the Pisidian Antioch, gave out before the gates of each city that he was come as a conqueror. On his way he had ravaged the land ; in the towns the houses had been plundered and the granaries emptied ; and the crusaders had to journey through a country which could supply nothing. The burning heat caused fatal sickness ; and as if these miseries were not enough, the acquisition of Tarsus was followed by an attempt at private war between Tancred and Baldwin, owing to a dispute for the precedence of their banners. The remissness of the enemy, which might easily have cut them off in the passes of Mount Taurus, allowed them to march safely through the defiles ; and Baldwin, Godfrey s brother, was enabled to comply with a request for help made by the Greek or Armenian ruler of Edessa. Welcomed into the city Baldwin made Latin prin- himself master, and the Latin principality of Edessa thus ciP alit y established lasted for fifty-four or, as some have supposed, forty-seven years. In the Syrian Antioch the crusaders hoped to win a Siege of splendid prize at the cost of little effort or none. Its Antioch. walls were mostly in ruins ; but the Seljukian governor, Baghasian, had resolved on determined resistance. The siege which followed has no interest for the military historian. At no time was the blockade complete, and it was brought to a successful issue only by treachery. Three months had already passed when the crusaders found themselves in desperate straits for want of food. They had wasted with frantic folly the cattle, the corn, and the wine which had fallen into their hands ; and when this first famine was relieved by a foraging expedition under Tancred, the supplies so brought in were wasted with equal recklessness. A second famine drove away not only Taticius, the lieutenant of the Greek emperor, but William of Melun, whose sledge-hammer blows dealt in battle had won him the surname of the Carpenter, and even the hermit Peter. Taticius made his way to Cyprus ; the other two were caught and brought back to the camp by Tancred. It was at this time, when the general prospect seemed so discouraging, that envoys from the Fatimite caliph of Egypt offered to guarantee to all unarmed pilgrims an unmolested sojourn of one month in Jerusalem, and to aid the crusaders on their march to the Holy City, if they VI. 79