Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/574

 538 FRANCE [HISTORY. 1096-97. lar iu character; there was in it little of knowledge or dis cipline ; it was rather like those instinctive emigrations which, flowing from the north or east from time to time, have overwhelmed the more civilized portions of the world. In the pope s sermon at Clermont there was a striking passage which contrasted the wretchedness of men s daily life in France with the comfort of the &quot; land flowing with milk and honey&quot; towards which he directed their eyes. Religious enthusiasm joined with present misery; the dream of a millennial home in Palestine instead of famine and pestilence in France here is the force which set the first army moving towards the East. And, naturally enough, that first army was almost entirely composed of the com mon people ; the feudal lord felt none of the stings of want, and as yet had no interest in Eastern adventure. The first The vast throng of crusaders who set off eastwards in crusade, the summer of 1096 was divided into three hosts. The van was led by the one soldier of the company, Walter the Pennyless, he had at his back about fifteen thousand footmen ; the main body of French pilgrims, led by Peter the Hermit, followed next ; then came a rabble of German peasants, under the guidance of Godescalc. a monk ; on the skirts of the whole force hung an independent body of horsemen. A small band of Norman knights alone saved this crusade from absolute contempt. With great loss the host traversed Europe, and were put across the Bosphorus by the emperor Alexius. There they met the Turk at last, and found him more than their match. The energy of Kilidg Arslan, the sultan of Niccea, soon destroyed them all; they perished far from the walls of Jerusalem. Meanwhile the interest in the holy places was far from growing less in France. It at last attracted the attention of the lord as well as of the vassal, and the second expedi tion promised to be very different from the first. Like the first, it was also divided into three hosts, a northern, a central, and a southern. The northern army was composed of Flemings and Lorrainers, under command of Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine, a Caroling prince ; it had little or no French blood in it. The central army was French, Norman, and Burgundian, headed by Hugh, count of Vermandois, King Philip s brother, who commanded the Frenchmen ; by Robert, duke of Normandy, leading English men and Normans ; by Alan of Brittany, with his Celtic following ; and by Stephen of Blois, head of that powerful house, who had espoused Adela, the daughter of William the Bastard, and was father of Stephen afterwards king of England. The third army, by far the most complete and best equipped, was composed of the southerners sub ject to Raymond of Toulouse. The Italian Normans, under Tancred and Bohemond, set forth by themselves. These all, by sea or land, converged on Constantinople, and great was the anxiety of Alexius, who had but one wish, that he might see them safely across the narrow strait which severs Europe from Asia. At last they were all passed over ; and William of Tyre declares that at a great muster held on the Asiatic shore there stood forth seven hundred thousand men in all. The figures may be extravagant ; there is no doubt that the host was vast and strong. And so Kilidg Arslan found it. He attacked them again and again as they moved southwards through Asia Minor; but they de feated and crippled him so that he could not stay their ad vance. They reached Antioch, and took it after a long siege and fierce fighting, which broke the power of the Seljukian Turks. They left Bohemond the Norman as prince of Antioch, and marched onwards. Baldwin, Godfrey s brother, moving eastward to succour the Christian lord of Edessa, took the place for himself, and founded the Frankish county of Edessa in 1097. The main body, re duced by many causes to about forty thousand warriors, reached Jerusalem, and after a desperate siege, signalized by prodigies of valour, stormed the holy city on the loth 109! of July 1099. The crusaders at once elected Godfrey of HO Bouillon king of Jerusalem ; and though he did not accept so sacred a title, he became lord of the holy city, and the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem began. So long as he lived, he ruled with vigour and success; and the year 1100 seemed to have almost fulfilled the millennial hopes which had been so bright a century before. The battle of Antioch in 1098 had broken the Seljukian power; that of Ascalon in 1099 checked the Fatimites; and Godfrey seemed likely to found a permanent Christian lordship in the East. But death soon closed his career, and the organi zation of the great conquest was left to others. Four Latin principalities, Jerusalem, Tripolis, Antioch, and Edessa, were formed, and arranged on the strictest principles of conscious feudalism : the new kingdom of Jerusalem held only of the papacy. At home the French monarchy was far from quiet, indo lent Philip being threatened by the vigorous attack of William II. of England, who claimed once more the French Vexin, and also made war on the count of Maine. In this obscure warfare Philip s eldest son Louis, to whom was en trusted the defence of the western frontier, showed ample promise of his vigour, though it was the arrow in the New Forest which in 1100 relieved the French king of all fear of his rival. Henry Beauclerc, the Conqueror s youngest son, succeeded William in England, and before long (1106) had conquered and captured at Tinchebray his elder brother Robert Courthose, the crusading duke of Normandy. Under his capable government England and Normandy enjoyed repose and prosperity. When it was known in the West that Godfrey of Bouillon was dead, and that the infant kingdom of Jerusalem was in danger, William IX. of Aquitaine, who, now that Raymond of Toulouse had settled at Tripolis, had become the foremost prince of southern France, set forth with new levies to the succour of the cause. He was joined by some few northern barons, one of whom, Hcrpin of Bourges, sold his lordship to Philip of France, and began that transfer of feudal territory which was of the highest service to the kingly power. With Bourges the French monarchy for the first time got footing on the south bank of the Loire. The expedition failed ignominiously ; William came home to Aquitaine almost alone ; and an attempt made somewhat later by Bohemond of Antioch on Constantinople itself came also to nothing. With these two failures the first crusade ended. As yet its effects on France could hardly be felt ; the papacy alone was at first seen to be a gainer by the movement. For the new and rigid feudalism of Jeru salem, with its hierarchy of lords, and its code of justice, the famous Assises, all eventually looked to the papacy as its head. While the Western monarchs all strove against the pope, the pope was the sole support and undisputed master of the monarchy of the East. In one respect this first crusade is specially interesting to France ; her language, newly assured of independent life, no longer a patois or a dialect of the common Latin, received fresh recognition, and spread abroad in the world. As Latin was the common speech of the church, so French became the common speech of warlike Christendom. It had been carried by the Normans into England and Sicily; now it was the recognized tongue of the Latinized East ; and from this time onward it was adopted as the language of feudal and political life. In the year 1100 Philip, following the traditional usage I&amp;lt;&amp;lt; of his house, had made his son Louis joint-king, and put off the burdens of his royalty. The young man, full of vigour and a true king, had a hard struggle at the first ; the limits of the royal power were very narrow ; Louis is said to have built the greater Chatelet at Paris as a defence against the