Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/660

Rh G26 CRUSADES would acknowledge his supremacy within the bounds of his Syrian empire. The reply of the crusaders was brief and definite. God had destined Jerusalem for Christians ; if any others held it, they were invaders who must be cast out. This defiance was followed by a victory won over some reinforcements which were hastening from Csesarea and other cities to the aid of Baghasian. But the time went on ; the siege was still protracted ; and there were rumours that a Persian army was approaching. To Bohemond it seemed that there was no hope of success except from fraud, and that from fraud he might reap a goodly harvest. In a renegade Christian named Phirouz he found a traitor ready to do his work ; and he was able now to announce in the council that he could place the city in their hands, and that he would do so if they would allow him to rule in Antioch as Baldwin ruled in Edessa. In spite of a protest from Raymond of Toulouse the compact was accepted, 1098; and on the same night Bohemond with a few followers climbed the wall, and having seized ten towers, of which they killed all the guards, opened a gate, and admitted the Christian hosts. In the confusion which followed their entrance some of the besieged shut themselves up in the citadel. Of the rest 10,000, it is said, were massacred. Baghasian escaped beyond the besieger s lines ; but he fell from his horse, and a Syrian Christian, cutting off his head, carried it to the camp of the crusaders, who now passed from famine to plenty, from extreme hunger to wild riot. They were committing a blunder as well as a sin. The Persians were at hand ; and the Turks in the citadel found that the crusaders lay between themselves and the hosts of Kerboga, prince of Mosul, and Kilidj Arslan. The Latin camp was again wasted with famine. Stephen of Chartres, who had deserted it before the betrayal of the city to Bohemond, had on his westward journey met the Emperor Alexius, who was marching to the aid of the crusaders with a large body of pilgrims from Europe. Stephen s tidings were followed by an order for retreat, and the pilgrims were compelled to turn back with their companions. Protesting in vain against this shameful breach of his duty and his vow, Guy, a brother of Bohemond, said in the vehemence of his rage that if God were all-powerful He would not suffer such things to be done. Miraculous In Antioch the desperation of the crusaders made them discovery of ij s t en eagerly to stories of dreams and revelations from L&amp;lt;-mce heaven. A Lombard priest had learnt in a vision that the third year of the crusade should see the conquest of Jerusalem ; and those who had heard from the lips of the Saviour Himself a rebuke of the vices which had caused all their disasters, had also been assured that in five days the needful help would be granted to them. The impulse, once given, gained strength. Peter Barthelemy, the chaplain of Raymond of Toulouse, related a revelation made to him by St Andrew. The steel head of the spear which had pierced the side of the Redeemer as He hung on the cross had been hidden, according to this tale, in the church of St Peter; and the recovery of this lance would be followed by immediate and decisive success. Two days were to be spent in special devotion ; on the third they were to search for the long-lost weapon. The night had come, and their toil had thus far gone for nothing, when the priest stepped down into the pit. After some strokes of his spade he came upon the holy relic, which was care fully wrapped in a cloth of silk and gold. The priest dis played the lance head ; and in a few minutes the wonderful tidings had been spread through the city. A few months later Arnold, the chaplain of Bohemond, publicly denied the genuineness of the relic, and charged the chaplain of Raymond with deliberate imposture. Barthelemy appealed to the ordeal of fire, and passed it, to all appearance, successfully. The bystanders were loud in their exulta tion ; but Peter had been fatally injured, and in a few days he died. Meanwhile the holy lance, borne by the Papal legate Def Adhemar, had effectually aided the crusaders in the Ker decisive struggle with Kerboga, before whom Peter the ^&quot; Hermit had appeared as an envoy charged to submit to him the alternative of baptism or of retreat from a land which St Peter had bestowed upon the Christiana. The answer was a curt refusal, and a battle followed in which Bohemond was severely pressed by Kilidj Arslan, and Kerboga was bearing down the forces of Godfrey and Hugh of Vermandois, when some knights, clothed in whits armour and mounted on white horses, were seen riding along the slopes of the neighbouring hills. &quot; The saints are come to our help,&quot; cried the Papal legate, and the imagination of the people at once beheld in these strangers the martyrs St George, St Theodore, and Sfc Maurice. The impulse imparted by this conviction was irresistible. The complete defeat of Kerboga and Arslan was followed by the surrender of the garrison in the citadel, and Bohemond remained lord of Antioch. The crusaders as a body wished to set off at once on their Suf march to Jerusalem; but their leaders shrank from the of1 danger of traversing waterless wastes at the end of a cru Syrian summer. While some of the crusaders were busied with expeditions against neighbouring cities, many more were pressed by more anxious cares, arising from an out break of plague which proved fatal, among others, to the Papal legate Adhemar. Ten months after the fall of Antioch the crusaders, Ma having become masters of Laodicea, were bidden by the tlie Emperor Alexius to await his coming in June. But with j^j him their forbearance had reached its limit, and they bade him remember that, having broken his compact, he had no longer any claim on their obedience. Marching across the plain of Berytus and along the narrow strip of country once celebrated for the wealth and splendour of the great Phoenician cities, the army at length reached Jaffa, and thence turned inland to Ramlah, a town only sixteen miles distant from Jerusalem. Two days later they came in view of the holy city. At the sight of the distant walls and towers all fell on their knees, in an outburst of thankfulness which could express itself only in sighs and tears, while they stooped to kiss the sacred soil. The rest of the march they performed with bare feet and in the garb of pilgrims ; but their armour was again put on, when Raymond of Toulouse with his followers invested the city from the western side, while Godfrey and Tancred, with Robert of Normandy and Robert of Flanders, blockaded it from the north. On the fifth day a desperate attempt was Siei made to storm the walls, with a single ladder and with no CQV siege instruments. It was no wonder that in spite of a their efforts the assailants should be beaten back and hurled from the ramparts. Thirty days more passed away, while Gaston of Beam was busily occupied in directing the construction of siege engines of timber brought from the woods of Shechem. During the whole of this time the besiegers were in the greatest distress from lack of water. All the cisterns and receptacles of any kind had been care fully destroyed by the enemy, whose horsemen harassed or cut off the parties of Christians who were sent about the country to search for it. Nor was the discipline of the camp by any means what it should be ; and the phantom of Adhemar of Puy appeared, it was said, to denounce the licence which was provoking the divine judgments. But if there was wild riot in some quarters, there was devotion and enthusiasm in others. Tancred generously made up his quarrel with Bohemond, and like the Levites round the walls of Jericho, the clergy moved round the city iu