Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/612

 in since our last glimpse of Spanish matters —while most of the northern parts of Europe itself were still shrouded in heathen darkness. It needs some little effort to remember how true to the letter Urban's religious geography was. The south-western peninsula was then, what the south-eastern is now, the land of Christian nations slowly winning back their own from infidel masters. And, before Swedish kings had crossed the Baltic, before Sword-brothers and Teutonic knights had arisen, before Russia had made her way northward, southward, and eastward, all north-eastern Europe was still heathen, while Scandinavia, Poland, and Hungary, were still recent conquests for the faith. Into the central strip of Christian land which lay between the heathen of the north and the Turks and Saracens of the south, east, and west, the enemy was now ready to cross. Urban called on his hearers to go forth and stop the way; and not a few of the men whose names have been famous, some whose names have been infamous, in our own story were among the foremost to go forth on the holy errand to which the voice of the Pontiff called them.

Those among the recorded crusaders whose names come more immediately home to Englishmen did not join the holy war till a later time. But not a few names which have been long familiar to us are to be found in the list of those who joined in the first regular expedition which set forth in the course of the year which followed the assembly at Clermont. Beyond the bounds of England and Normandy we may mark the names of Hugh surnamed the Great, the brother of King Philip, Count of Vermandois, Count of Valois in succession to the holy Simon, but who appears in our chief list of crusaders by the lowlier title of the Count of Crêpy. He went to the work, leaving his fiefs to