On returning to camp, Peter the Hermit was about to set forth in detail, before all the people of the crusaders, the answer of Corbogha, his pride, his threats, and the pomp with which he was surrounded; but Godfrey de Bouillon, "fearing lest the multitude, already crushed beneath the weight of their woes, should be stricken with fresh terror," stopped Peter at the moment when he was about to begin his speech, and, taking him aside, prevailed upon him to tell the result of his mission in a few words, just that the Turks desired battle, and that it must be prepared for at once. "Forthwith all, from the highest to the lowest, testify the most eager desire to measure swords with the infidels, and seem to have completely forgotten their miseries, and to calculate upon victory. All resume their arms, and get ready their horses, their breastplates, their helmets, their shields, and their swords. It is publicly announced throughout the city that the next morning, before sunrise, every one will have to be in readiness, and join his host to follow faithfully the banner of his prince."

Next day, accordingly, the 28th of June, 1098, the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, the whole Christian army issued from their camp, with a portion of the clergy marching at their head, and chanting the 68th Psalm, "Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered!" "I saw these things, I who speak," says one of the chroniclers, Raymond d'Agiles, chaplain to the count of Toulouse: "I was there, and I carried the spear of the Lord." The crusaders formed in twelve divisions; and, of all their great chiefs, the count of Toulouse alone was unable to assume the command of his; he was detained in Antioch by the consequences of a wound, and he had the duty of keeping in check the Turkish garrison, still masters of the citadel. The crusaders presented the appearance of old troops ill clad, ill provided, and surmounting by sheer spirit the fatigues and losses of a long war; many sick soldiers could scarcely march; many barons and knights were on foot; and Godfrey de Bouillon himself had been obliged to borrow a horse from the count of Toulouse. During the march a gentle rain refreshed souls as well as bodies, and was regarded as a favor from heaven. Just as the battle was commencing, Corbogha, struck by the impassioned, stern, and indomitable aspect of the crusaders, felt somewhat disquieted, and made proposals, it is said, to the Christian princes of what he had refused them the evening before—a fight between some of their knights and as many Saracens; but they in their turn rejected the proposition. There is a moment, during great struggles, when the souls of men are launched forth like bomb-shells, which nothing can stop or cause to recoil. The battle was long, stubborn, and, at some points, indecisive: Kilidge-Arslan, the indefatigable sultan of Nicaea, attacked Bohemond so briskly, that, save for the prompt assistance of Godfrey de Bouillon and Tancred, the prince of Antioch had been in great peril. But the pious and warlike enthusiasm of the crusaders at length prevailed over the savage bravery of the Turks; and Corbogha, who had promised the khalif of Bagdad a defeat of the Christians, fled away towards the Euphrates with a weak escort of faithful troops. Tancred pursued till nightfall the sultans of Aleppo and Damascus and the emir of Jerusalem. According to the Christian chroniclers, one hundred thousand infidels, and only four thousand crusaders, were left on the field of battle. The camp of the Turks was given over to pillage; and fifteen thousand camels, and it is not stated how many horses, were carried off. The tent of Corbogha himself was, for his conquerors, a rich prize and an object of admiration. It was laid out in streets, flanked by towers, as if it were a fortified town; gold and precious stones glittered in every part of it; it was capable of containing more than two thousand persons; and Bohemond sent it to Italy, where it was long preserved. The conquerors employed several days in conveying into Antioch the spoils of the vanquished; and "every crusader," says Albert of Aix, "found himself richer than he had been at starting from Europe."

This great success, with the wealth it was the means of spreading, and the pretensions and hopes it was the cause of raising amongst the crusaders, had for some time the most injurious effects. Division set in amongst them, especially amongst the chiefs. Some abandoned themselves to all the license of victory, others to the sweets of repose. Some, fatigued and disgusted, quietly prepared for and accomplished their return home; others, growing more and more ambitious and bold, aspired to conquests and principalities in the East. Why should not they acquire what Baldwin had acquired at Edessa, and what Bohemond was within an ace of possessing at Antioch? Others were jealous of the great fortunes made before their eyes: and Raymond of Toulouse was vexed at Bohemond's rule in Antioch, and refused to give up to him the citadel. One and another troubled themselves little more about the main end of their crusade, the deliverance of Jerusalem, and devoted themselves to their personal interests. A few days after the defeat of the Turks, the council of princes deliberated upon the question of marching immediately upon Jerusalem, and then all these various inclinations came out. After a lively debate, the majority decided that they should wait till the heat of summer was over, the army rested from its fatigues, and the reinforcements expected from the West arrived. The common sort of crusaders were indignant at this delay: "Since the princes will not lead us to Jerusalem," was said aloud, "choose we among the knights a brave man who will serve us faithfully, and, if the grace of God be with us, go we under his leading to Jerusalem. It is not enough for our princes that we have remained here a whole year, and that two hundred thousand men-at- arms have fallen here! Perish all they who would remain at Antioch, even as its inhabitants but lately perished!" But, murmuring all the while, they staid at Antioch, in spite of a violent epidemic, which took off, it was said, in a single month, fifty thousand persons, and amongst them the spiritual chief of the crusade, Adhemar, bishop of Puy, who had the respect and confidence of all the crusaders. To find some specious pretext, or some pious excuse for this inactivity, or simply to pass the time which was not employed as it had been sworn it should be, war-like expeditions were made into Syria and Mesopotamia; some emirs were driven from their petty dominions; some towns were taken; some infidels were massacred. The count of Toulouse persisted during several weeks in besieging Marrah, a town situated between Hamath and Aleppo. At last he took it, but there were no longer any inhabitants to be found in it; they had all taken refuge under ground. Huge fires lighted at the entrance of their hiding-place forced them to come out, and as they came they were all put to death or carried off as slaves; "which so terrified the neighboring towns," says a chronicler, "that they yielded of their own free will and without compulsion."

It was all at once ascertained that Jerusalem had undergone a fresh calamity, and fallen more and more beneath the yoke of the infidels. Abou-Kacem, khalif of Egypt, had taken it from the Turks; and his vizier, Afdhel, had left a strong garrison in it. A sharp pang of grief, of wrath, and of shame shot through the crusaders. "Could it be," they cried, "that Jerusalem should be taken and retaken, and never by Christians?" Many went to seek out the count of Toulouse. He was known to be much taken up with the desire of securing the possession of Marrah, which he had just captured; still great confidence was felt in him. He had made a vow never to return to the West; he was the richest of the crusader princes; he was conjured to take upon himself the leadership of the army; to him had been intrusted the spear of the Lord discovered at Antioch; if the other princes should be found wanting, let him at least go forward with the people, in full assurance; if not, he had only to give up the spear to the people, and the people would go right on to Jerusalem, with the Lord for their leader. After some hesitation, Raymond declared that the departure should take place in a fortnight, and he summoned the princes to a preliminary meeting. On assembling "they found themselves still less at one," says the chronicler, and the majority refused to budge. To induce them, it is said that Raymond offered ten thousand sous to Godfrey de Bouillon, the same to Robert of Normandy, six thousand to the count of Flanders, and five thousand to Tancred; but, at the same time, Raymond announced his intention of leaving a strong garrison in Marrah to secure its defence. "What!" cried the common folk amongst the crusaders, "disputes about Antioch and disputes about Marrah! We will take good care there be no quarrel touching this town; come, throw we down its walls; restore we peace amongst the princes, and set we the count at liberty: when Marrah no longer exists, he will no longer fear to lose it." The multitude rushed to surround Marrah, and worked so eagerly at the demolition of its ramparts that the count of Toulouse, touched by this popular feeling as if it were a proof of the divine will, himself put the finishing touch to the work of destruction and ordered the speedy departure of the army. At their head marched he, barefooted, with his clergy and the bishop of Akbar, all imploring the mercy of God and the protection of the saints. After him marched Tancred with forty knights and many foot. "Who then may resist this people," said Turks and Saracens one to another, "so stubborn and cruel, whom, for the space of a year, nor famine, nor the sword, nor any other danger could cause to abandon the siege of Antioch, and who now are feeding upon human flesh?" In fact a rumor had spread that, in their extreme distress for want of provisions, the crusaders had eaten corpses of Saracens found in the moats of Marrah.

Several of the chiefs, hitherto undecided, now followed the popular impulse, whilst others still hesitated. But on the approach of spring, 1099, more than eight months after the capture of Antioch, Godfrey of Bouillon, his brother, Eustace of Boulogne, Robert of Flanders, and their following, likewise began to march. Bohemond, after having accompanied them as far as Laodicea, left them with a promise of rejoining them before Jerusalem, and returned to Antioch, where he remained. Fresh crusaders arrived from Flanders, Holland, and England, and amongst them the Saxon prince, Edgar Atheling, who had for a brief interval been king of England, between the death of Harold and the coronation of William the Conqueror. The army pursued its way, pretty slowly, still stopping from time to time to besiege towns, which they took and which the chiefs continued to dispute for amongst themselves. Envoys from the khalif of Egypt, the new holder of Jerusalem, arrived in the crusaders' camp, with presents and promises from their master. They had orders to offer forty thousand pieces of gold to Godfrey, sixty thousand to Bohemond, the most dreaded by the Mussulmans of all the crusaders, and other gifts to divers other chiefs. Aboul-Kacem further promised liberty of pilgrimage and exercise of the Christian religion in Jerusalem; only the Christians must not enter, unless unarmed. At this proposal the crusader chiefs cried out with indignation, and declared to the Egyptian envoys that they were going to hasten their march upon Jerusalem, threatening at the same time to push forward to the borders of the Nile. At the end of the month of flay, 1099, they were all masse upon the frontiers of Phoenicia and Palestine, numbering according to the most sanguine calculations, only fifty thousand fighting men.

Upon entering Palestine, as they came upon spots known in sacred history or places of any importance, the same feelings of greed and jealousy which had caused so much trouble in Asia Minor and Syria caused divisions once more amongst the crusaders. The chieftain, the simple warrior almost, who was the first to enter city, or burgh, or house, and plant his flag there halted in it and claimed to be its possessor; whilst those "whom nothing was dearer than the commandments of God," say the chroniclers, pursued their march, barefooted, beneath the banner of the cross, deplored the covetousness and the quarrels of their brethren. When the crusaders arrived a Emmaus, some Christians of Bethlehem came and implore their aid against the infidels. Tancred was there; and he, with the consent of Godfrey, set out immediately, in the middle of the night, with a small band of one hundred horsemen, and went and planted his own flag on the top of the church at Bethlehem at the very hour at which the birth of Jesus Christ had been announced to the shepherds of Judea. Next day, June 10th 1099, on advancing, at dawn of day, over the heights of Emmaus, the army of the crusaders had, all at once, beneath their gaze the Holy City.

"Lo! Jerusalem appears in sight. Lo! every hand point, out Jerusalem. Lo! a thousand voices are heard as one in salutation of Jerusalem.

"After the great, sweet joy which filled all hearts at this first glimpse came a deep feeling of contrition, mingled with awful and reverential affection. Each scarcely dared to raise the eye towards the city which had been the chosen abode of Christ, where He died, was buried, and rose again.

"In accents of humility, with words low spoken, with stifled sobs, with sighs and tears, the pent-up yearnings of a people in joy and at the same time in sorrow sent shivering through the air a murmur like that which is heard in leafy forests what time the wind blows through the leaves, or like the dull sound made by the sea which breaks upon the rocks, or hisses as it foams over the beach."

It was better to quote these beautiful stanzas from "Jerusalem Delivered" than to reproduce the pompous and monotonous phrases of the chroniclers. The genius of Tasso was capable of understanding and worthy to depict the emotions of a Christian army at sight of the Jerusalem they had come to deliver.

We will not pause over the purely military and technical details of the siege. It was calculated that there were in the city twenty thousand armed inhabitants and forty thousand men in garrison, the most valiant and most fanatical Mussulmans that Egypt could furnish. According to William of Tyre, the most judicious and the best informed of the contemporary historians, "When the crusaders pitched their camp over against Jerusalem, there had arrived there about forty thousand persons of both sexes, of whom there were at the most twenty thousand foot, well equipped, and fifteen hundred knights." Raymond d'Agiles, chaplain to the count of Toulouse, reduces still further to twelve thousand the number of foot capable of bearing arms, and that of the knights to twelve or thirteen hundred. This weak army was destitute of commissariat and the engines necessary for such a siege. Before long it was a prey to the horrors of thirst. "The neighborhood of Jerusalem," says William of Tyre, "is arid; and it is only at a considerable distance that there are to be found rivulets, fountains, or wells of fresh water. Even these springs had been filled up by the enemy a little before the arrival of our troops. The crusaders issued from the camp secretly and in small detachments to look for water in all directions; and just when they believed they had found some hidden trickier, they saw themselves surrounded by a multitude of folks engaged in the same search; disputes forthwith arose amongst them, and they frequently came to blows. Horses, mules, asses, and cattle of all kinds, consumed by heat and thirst, fell down and died; and their carcasses, left here and there about the camp, tainted the air with a pestilential smell." Wood, iron, and all the materials needful for the construction of siege machinery were as much to seek as water. But a warlike and pious spirit made head against all. Trees were felled at a great distance from Jerusalem; and scaling-towers were roughly constructed, as well as engines for hurling the stones which were with difficulty brought up within reach of the city. "All ye who read this," says Raymond d'Agiles, "think not that it was light labor; it was nigh a mile from the spot where the engines, all dismounted, had to be transported to that where they were remounted." The knights protected against the sallies of the besieged the workmen employed upon this work. One day Tancred had gone alone to pray on the Mount of Olives and to gaze upon the holy city, when five Mussulmans sallied forth and went to attack him; he killed three of them, and the other two took to flight. There was at one point of the city ramparts a ravine which had to be filled up to make an approach; and the count of Toulouse had proclamation made that be would give a denier to every one who would go and throw three stones into it. In three days the ravine was filled up. After four weeks of labor and preparation, the council of princes fixed a day for delivering the assault; but as there had been quarrels between several of the chiefs, and, notably, between the count of Toulouse and Tancred, it was resolved that before the grand attack they should all be reconciled at a general supplication, with solemn ceremonies, for divine aid. After a strict fast, all the crusaders went forth armed from their quarters, and preceded by their priests, bare-footed and chanting psalms, they moved, in slow procession, round Jerusalem, halting at all places hallowed by some fact in sacred history, listening to the discourses of their priests, and raising eyes full of wrath at hearing the scoffs addressed to them by the Saracens, and seeing the insults heaped upon certain crosses they had set up and upon all the symbols of the Christian faith. "Ye see," cried Peter the Hermit; "ye hear the threats and blasphemies of the enemies of God. Now this I swear to you by your faith; this I swear to you by the arms ye carry: to-day these infidels be still full of pride and insolence, but to-morrow they shall be frozen with fear; those mosques, which tower over Christian ruins, shall serve for temples to the true God, and Jerusalem shall hear no longer aught but the praises of the Lord." The shouts of the whole Christian army responded to the hopes of the apostle of the crusade; and the crusaders returned to their quarters repeating the words of the prophet Isaiah: "So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the West, and His glory from the rising of the sun."

On the 14th of July, 1099, at daybreak, the assault began at divers points; and next day, Friday, the 15th of July, at three in the afternoon, exactly at the hour at which, according to Holy Writ, Jesus Christ had yielded up the ghost, saying, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit," Jerusalem was completely in the hands of the crusaders. We have no heart to dwell on the massacres which accompanied the victory so clearly purchased by the conquerors. The historians, Latin or Oriental, set down at seventy thousand the number of Mussulmans massacred on the ramparts, in the mosques, in the streets, underground, and wherever they had attempted to find refuge: a number exceeding that of the armed inhabitants and the garrison of the city. Battle-madness, thirst for vengeance, ferocity, brutality, greed, and every hateful passion were satiated without scruple, in the name of their holy cause. When they were weary of slaughter, "orders were given," says Robert the monk, "to those of the Saracens who remained alive and were reserved for slavery, to clean the city, remove from it the dead, and purify it from all traces of such fearful carnage. They promptly obeyed; removed, with tears, the dead; erected outside the gates dead-houses fashioned like citadels or defensive buildings; collected in baskets dissevered limbs; carried them away, and washed off the blood that stained the floors of temples and houses."

Eight or ten days after the capture of Jerusalem, the crusader chiefs assembled to deliberate upon the election of a king of their prize. There were several who were suggested for it and might have pretended to it. Robert Shorthose, duke of Normandy, gave an absolute refusal, "liking better," says an English chronicler, "to give himself up to repose and indolence in Normandy than to serve, as a soldier, the King of kings: for which God never forgave him." Raymond, count of Toulouse, was already advanced in years, and declared "that he would have a horror of bearing the name of king in Jerusalem, but that he would give his consent to the election of anyone else." Tancred was and wished to be only the first of knights. Godfrey de Bouillon the more easily united votes in that he did not seek them. He was valiant, discreet, worthy, and modest; and his own servants, being privately sounded, testified to his possession of the virtues which are put in practice without any show. He was elected King of Jerusalem, and he accepted the burden whilst refusing the insignia. "I will never wear a crown of gold," he said, "in the place where the Saviour of the world was crowned with thorns." And he assumed only the title of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre.

It is a common belief amongst historians that after the capture of Jerusalem, and the election of her king, Peter the Hermit entirely disappeared from history. It is true that he no longer played an active part, and that, on returning to Europe, he went into retirement near Huy, in the diocese of Lige, where he founded a monastery, and where he died on the 11th of July, 1115. But William of Tyre bears witness that Peter's contemporaries were not ungrateful to him, and did not forget him when he had done his work. "The faithful," says he, "dwellers at Jerusalem, who, four or five years before had seen the venerable Peter there, recognizing at that time in the same city him to whom the patriarch had committed letters invoking the aid of the princes of the West, bent the knee before him, and offered him their respects in all humility. They recalled to mind the circumstances of his first voyage; and they praised the Lord who had endowed him with effectual power of speech and with strength to rouse up nations and kings to bear so many and such long toils for love of the name of Christ. Both in private and in public all the faithful at Jerusalem exerted themselves to render to Peter the Hermit the highest honors, and attributed to him alone, after God, their happiness in having escaped from the hard servitude under which they had been for so many years groaning, and in seeing the holy city recovering her ancient freedom."

END OF VOLUME I.