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 128 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. which had long been settled there/ A little later the pro- tostrator, acting under the orders of Isaac, endeavored to surprise the Germans while making a raid for provisions. But the Armenians had given notice of the ambuscade to Frederic. The Germans met Isaac's troops and utterly de- feated them. They attacked Adrianople and Didymotica and made raids into Macedonia and Thrace. Isaac was now only too anxious to get rid of the Crusaders, and therefore re- newed his treaty with Frederic, agreed that his army should cross into Asia Minor by the Dardanelles, sent him nine hundred hostages, and prepared a flotilla of fifteen hundred ships and twenty-six galleys, on which the army passed out of the European dominions of the empire. Isaac, according to the Arab writers, still maintained the show of friendship with Saladin, and was, in fact, playing the double game of a weak man, professing to be friendly with Frederic while he was writing to Saladin that the German army was so weak that it would accomplish nothing. When Frederic reached the do- minions of the Sultan of Iconium, the Turks endeavored to delay his progress. From them, however, he would brook no delay. He defeated the sultan's army in a pitched battle, stormed Iconium and captured it. The Turks, as with the usual, offered a continued resistance. " The more," says a report written b}^ a pilgrim to the pope — " the more we killed, the more they multiplied. During many daj's we fought from morning till night." The army was in the greatest distress for want of food and forage, and was decimated by disease. All this time the Turks, or rather their ruler, Kilidji Arslan, professed to desire the friendship of the Ger- mans, so that the Western chronicler remarks that the Turks were greater dissemblers than even the Greeks. In this cru- sade it was noted that the Christian populations, which had on previous occasions flocked to the Christian armies for support and to give aid, fled before it, a fact affording striking evidence ' Nicctas, book ii. c. 4, is careful to point out that there was a great rcsemblaDce between the religious opinions of the Germans and those of the Armenians. They used unleavened bread, and had other customs which had been " improved upon " by the Orthodox.