 CHAPTER XV Conquest of England by the Normans Part II From the time of Rolo's settlement in Normandy the communications of the Normans with England had become more and more frequent and important for the two countries. The success of the invasions of the Danes in England in the tenth century, and the reigns of three kings of the Danish line, had obliged the princes of Saxon race to take refuge in Normandy, the Duke of which, Richard I, had given his daughter Emma in marriage to their grandfather, Ethel Red the Second. When, at the death of the last Danish king, Hardecanute, the Saxon prince Edward ascended the throne of his fathers, he had passed twenty-seven years of exile in Normandy, and he returned to England almost a stranger, in the words of the chronicles, to the country of his ancestors, far more Norman than Saxon in his manners, tastes, and language, and surrounded by Normans, whose numbers and prestige under his reign increased from day to day. A hot rivalry, nationally as well as courtly, grew up between them and the Saxons. At the head of these latter was Godwin, Count of Kent, and his five sons, the eldest of whom, Harold, was destined before long to bear the whole brunt of the struggle. Between these powerful rivals, Edward the Confessor, a pacific, pious, gentle, and undecided king, wavered incessantly, at one time trying to resist, and at another compelled to yield to the pretensions and seditions by which he was beset. In ten-fifty-one the Saxon party and its head, Godwin, had risen and revolt. Duke William, on invitation perhaps from King Edward, paid a brilliant visit to England, where he found Normans everywhere established and powerful, in church as well as in state, in command of the fleets, ports, and principal English places. King Edward received him as his own son, gave him arms, horses, hounds, and hawking-birds, and sent him home full of presence and hopes. The chronicler, Ingolf, who accompanied William on his return to Normandy, and remained attached to him as private secretary, affirms that, during this visit, not only was there no question, between King Edward and the Duke of Normandy, of the latter's possible secession to the throne of England, but that never as yet had this probability occupied the attention of William. It is very doubtful whether William had said nothing upon the subject to King Edward at that time, and it is certain, from William's own testimony, that he had for a long while been thinking about it. Four years after this visit of the Duke to England, King Edward was reconciled to and lived on good terms with the family of the Godwins. Their father was dead, and the eldest son, Harold, asked the king's permission to go to Normandy, and claimed the release of his brother and nephew, who had been left as hostages in the keeping of Duke William. The king did not approve of the project. I have no wish to constrain thee, said he to Harold, but if thou go, it will be without my consent, and assuredly thy trip will bring some misfortune upon thee in our country. I know Duke William and his crafty spirit. He hates thee, and will grant thee not unless he sees his advantage therefrom. The only way to make him give up the hostages will be to send some other than thyself. Harold, however, persisted and went. William received him with apparent cordiality, promised him the release of the two hostages, escorted him and his comrades from castle to castle, and from entertainment to entertainment made them knights of the Grand Norman Order, and even invited them, by way of trying their new spurs, to accompany him on a little war-like expedition he was about to undertake in Brittany. Harold and his comrades behaved gallantly, and he and William shared the same tent and the same table. On returning, as they trodded side by side, William turned the conversation upon his youthful connection with the King of England. When Edward and I, said he to the Saxon, were living like brothers under the same roof, he promised, if he ever became King of England, to make me heir to his kingdom. I should very much like thee, Harold, to help me to realize this promise, and be assured that, if by thy aid I obtain the kingdom, whatsoever thou askest of me, I will grant it forthwith. Harold, in surprise and confusion, answered by an ascent which he tried to make as vague as possible. William took it as positive. Since thou dost'st consent to serve me, said he, thou must engage to fortify the castle of Dover, dig a well of fresh water there, and put it in the hands of my men at arms. Thou must also give me thy sister to be married to one of my barons, and thou must thyself espouse my daughter Adele. Harold, not witting, says the chronicler, how to escape from this pressing danger, promised all the Duke asked of him, reckoning doubtless on disregarding his engagement, and for the moment William asked him nothing more. But a few days afterwards he summoned, at Avranche, according to some, and by you according to others, and, more probably still, at Bonvia Surtuk, his Norman barons, and in the midst of this assembly, at which Harold was present, William, seated with his naked sword in his hand, caused to be brought and placed upon a table covered with the cloth of two gold reliquaries. Harold, said he, I call upon thee in presence of this noble assemblage, to confirm by oath the promise thou didst make me, to it, to aid me to obtain the Kingdom of England after the death of King Edward, to espouse my daughter Adele, and to send me thy sister to be married to one of my people. Harold, who had not expected this public summons, nevertheless did not hesitate any more than he had hesitated in his private conversation with William. He drew near, laid his hand on the two reliquaries, and swore to observe, in the best of his power, his agreement with the Duke, should he live in God-help. God-help! repeated those who were present. William made a sign, the cloth of gold was removed, and there was discovered a tub filled to the edge with bones and relics of all the saints that could be got together. The chronicler poet, Robert Wace, who alone and long afterwards recounts this last particular, adds that Harold was visibly troubled at the side of this saintly heap, but he had sworn. It is honourable to human nature not to be indifferent to oaths, even when those who exact them have but small reliance upon them, and when he who takes them has but small intention of keeping them. And so Harold departed, laden with presence, leaving William satisfied but not overconfident. When, on returning to England, Harold told King Edward what had passed between William and himself, Did I not warn thee, said the King, that I knew William, and that thy journey would bring great misfortunes upon thyself and upon our nation? Grant heaven that those misfortunes come not during my life. The King's wish was not granted. He fell ill, and on the fifth of January, 1066, he lay on his couch almost at the point of death. Harold and his kindred entered the chamber, and prayed the King to name a successor by whom the kingdom might be governed securely. Ye know, said Edward, that I have left my kingdom to the Duke of Normandy, and are there not here among ye those who have sworn to assure his succession? Harold advanced, and once more asked the King on whom the crown should devolve. Take it, if it is thy wish, Harold, said Edward, but the gift will be thy ruin, against the Duke and his barons thy power will not suffice. Harold declared that he feared neither the Norman nor any other foe. The King vexed at this importunity, turned round in his bed, saying, Let the English make King of whom they will, Harold or another, I consent, and shortly after expired. The very day after the celebration of his obsequies, Harold was proclaimed King by his partisans, amidst no small public disquietude, and Aldrid, Archbishop of York, lost no time in anointing him. William was in his park of Ruvray, near Rouen, trying a bow and arrows for the chase, when a faithful servant arrived from England to tell him that Edward was dead and Harold proclaimed King. William gave his bow to one of his people, and went back to his palace at Rouen, where he paced about in silence, sitting down, rising up, leaning upon a bench, without opening his lips and without any one of his peoples daring to address a word to him. There entered his son-a-chal, William de Bretonil, of whom, what ails the Duke? asked they who were present. You will soon know, answered he. Then, going up to the Duke, he said, Wherefore conceal your tidings, my lord? All the city knows that King Edward is dead, and that Harold has broken his oath to you, and had himself crowned King. I, said William, it is that which doth weigh me down. My lord, said William Fitz Osburn, a gallant knight and a confidential friend of the Duke. None should be wroth over what can be mended. It depends but on you to stop the mischief Harold is doing you. You shall destroy him if it please you. You have right. You have good men and true to serve you. You need have but courage, said on boldly. William gathered together his most important and most trusted counsellors, and they were unanimous in urging him to resent the perjury and injury. He sent to Harold a messenger charged to say, William, Duke of the Normans, doth recall to thee the oath thou swarest to him with thy mouth and with thy hand, on real and saintly relics. It is true, answered Harold, that I swore, but on compulsion. I promised what did not belong to me. My kingship is not my known. I cannot put it off from me without the consent of the country. I cannot any the more, without the consent of the country, espouse a foreigner. As for my sister, whom the Duke claims for one of his chieftains, she died within the year. If he will, I will send him the corpse. William replied without any violence, claiming the conditions soren, and especially Harold's marriage with his daughter Adele. For all answer to this summons Harold married a Saxon, sister of two powerful Saxon chieftains, Edwin and Morcar. There was an open rapture, and William swore that within the year he would go and claim, at the sword's point, payment of what was due to him, on the very spot where Harold thought himself to be most firm on his feet. And he set himself to the work. But being as far-sighted as he was ambitious, he resolved to secure for his enterprise the sanction of religious authority and the formal assent of the estates of Normandy. Not that he had any inclination to subordinate his power to that of the Pope. Five years previously, Robert de Gransmenil, abbot of St. Everill, with whom William had got embroiled, had claimed to reenter his monastery as master by virtue solely of an order from Pope Nicholas II. I will listen to the legates of the Pope, the common father of the faithful, said William, if they come to me to speak of the Christian faith of religion. But if a monk of my estates permit himself a single word beyond his place, I will have him hanged by his cowl from the highest oak of the nearest forest. When in one thousand he denounced to Pope Alexander II the perjury of Harold, asking him at the same time to do him justice, he made no scruple about promising that, if the Pope authorized him to write himself by war, he would bring back the kingdom of England to obedience to the Holy See. He had L'Enfranc for his negotiator with the court of Rome, and Pope Alexander II for chief counselor the celebrated monk Hildebrand, who was destined to succeed him under the name of Gregory VII. The opportunity of extending the empire of the church was too tempting to be spurned, and her future had too bold not to seize it, whatever might be the uncertainty and danger of the issue, and in spite of hesitation on the part of some of the Pope's advisors, the question was promptly decided in accordance with William's demand. Harold and his adherents were excommunicated, and on committing his bull to the hands of William's messenger, the Pope added a banner of the Roman Church and a ring containing, it is said, a hair of St. Peter set in a diamond. The estates of Normandy were less easy to manage. William called them together at Le Bon, and several of his vassals showed a zealous readiness to furnish him with vessels and victual, and to follow him beyond the sea. But others declared that they were not bound to any such service, and that they would not lend themselves to it. They had calls enough already, and had nothing more to spare. William Fitz Osburn scouted these objections. He is your lord, and hath need of you, said he to the recalcitrance. You ought to offer yourselves to him, and not wait to be asked. If he succeed in his purpose, you will be more powerful as well as he. If you fail him, and he succeed without you, he will remember it. Show him that you love him, and what ye do, do with a good grace. The discussion was keen. Many persisted in saying, true he is our lord, but if we pay him his rents, that should suffice. We are not bound to go and surf beyond the seas. We are already much burdened for his wars. It was at last agreed that Fitz Osburn should give the Duke the assembly's reply, for he knew well, they said, the ability of each. If ye mind not to do what I shall say, said Fitz Osburn, charge me not therewith. We will be bound by it, and will do it, was the cry amidst the general confusion. They repaired to the Duke's presence. My lord, said Fitz Osburn, I trove that there be not in the whole world such folk as these. You know the trouble and labour they have already undergone in supporting your rights, and they are minded to do still more, and serve you at all points, this side the sea and tether. Go you before, and they will follow you, and spare them in nothing. As for me I will furnish you with sixty vessels, manned with good fighters. Nay, nay, cried several of those presents, prelates and barons. We charge do not with such reply. When he hath business in his own country, we will do him the service we owe him. We be not bound to serve him in conquering another's territory, or to go beyond the sea for him. And they gathered themselves together in knots with much uproar. William was very wroth, says the chronicler, he retired to a chamber apart, summoned those in whom he had most confidence, and by their advice called before him his barons, each separately, and asked them if they were willing to help him. He had no intention, he told them, of doing them wrong, nor would he and his, now or hereafter, ever cease to treat them in perfect courtesy, and he would give them in writing such assurances as they were minded to devise. The majority of his people agreed to give him, more or less, according to circumstances, and he had everything reduced to writing. At the same time he made an appeal to all his neighbors, Bretons, Manso, and Angevines, hunting up soldiers wherever he could find them, and promising all who desired them lands in England if he affected its conquest. Lastly he repaired in person, first to Philip I, King of France, his Susurin, and then to Baldwin V, Count of Flanders, his father-in-law, asking for their assistance for his enterprise. Philip gave a formal refusal. What the Duke demands of you, said his advisors, is to his own profit and to your hurt. If you aid him, your country will be much burdened, and if the Duke fail, you will have the English or foes forever. The Count of Flanders made a show of a similar refusal, but privately he authorized William to raise soldiers in Flanders and pressed his vassals to follow him. William, having thus hunted up and collected all the forces he could hope for, thought only of putting them in motion, and of hurrying on the preparations for his departure. Whilst in obedience to his orders, the whole expedition, troops and ships, were collected at Dieve, he received from Conan II, Duke of Brittany, this message, I learned that thou art now minded to go beyond sea and conquer for thyself the kingdom of England. At the moment of starting for Jerusalem, Robert, Duke of Normandy, whom thou faintest to regard as thy father, left all his heritage to Alain, my father and his cousin, but thou and thy accomplices slew my father with poison at Vimou in Normandy. Afterwards thou didst invade his territory because I was too young to defend it, and contrary to all right, seeing that thou art a bastard, thou hast kept it until this day. Now, therefore, either give me back this Normandy which thou o'est me, or I will make war upon thee with all my forces. At this message, say the Chronicles, William was at first somewhat dismayed, but a Breton Lord, who had sworn fidelity to the two counts, and bore messages from one to the other, rubbed poison upon the inside of Conan's hunting-horn, of his horse's reins and of his gloves. Conan, having unwittingly put his gloves and handled the reins of his horse, lifted his hands to his face, and the touch having filled him with poisonous infection, he died soon after, to the great sorrow of his people, for he was an able and brave man and inclined to justice, and he who had betrayed him quitted before long the army of Conan, and informed Duke William of his death. Conan is not the only one of William's foes whom he was suspected of making away with by poison. There are no proofs, but contemporary assertions are positive, and the public of the time believed them without surprise. Being as unscrupulous about means as ambition and bold in aim, William was not of those whose character repels such an accusation. What, however, diminishes the suspicion is that, after and in spite of Conan's death, several Breton knights, and amongst others, two sons of Count Udyse, his uncle, attended at the tristing place of the Norman troops, and took part in the expedition. Dives was the place of assemblage appointed for fleet and army. William repaired thither about the end of August, 1066. But for several weeks contrary winds prevented him from putting to sea. Some vessels which made the attempt perished in the tempest, and some of the volunteer adventurers got disgusted and deserted. William maintained strict discipline amongst this multitude, forbidding plunder so strictly that the cattle fed in the fields in full security. The soldiers grew tired of waiting in idleness and often in sickness. Yon is a mad man, said they, who is minded to possess himself of another's land. God is against the design, and so refuses us a wind. About the twentieth of September the weather changed. The fleet got ready, but could only go in anchor at St. Valerie at the mouth of the Somme. There it was necessary to wait several more days. Impatience and disquietude were redoubled, and there appeared in the heavens a star with a tail, a certain sign of great things to come. William had the shrine of St. Valerie brought out and paraded about, being more impatient in his soul than anybody, but ever confident in his will and his good fortune. There was brought to him a spy whom Harold had sent to watch the forces and plans of the enemy, and William dismissed him, saying, Harold hath no need to take any care or be at any charges to know how we be, and what we be doing, he shall see for himself and shall feel it before the end of the year. At last, on the twenty-seventh of September 1066, the sun rose on a calm sea with a favourable wind, and towards evening the fleet set out. The mora, the vessel on which William was, and which had been given to him by his wife Matilda, led the way, and a figure in gilded bronze, some saying gold, representing their youngest son, William, had been placed on the prow, with the face towards England. Being a better sailor than the others, this ship was soon a long way ahead, and William had a mariner sent to the top of the main mast to see if the fleet were following. I see not but sea and sky, said the mariner. William had the ship brought too, and the second time the mariner said, I see four ships. Before long he cried, I see a forest of mass and sails. On the twenty-ninth of September, St. Michael's Day, the expedition arrived off the coast of England, at Pevensey, near Hastings, and when the tide had ebbed, and the ships remained aground on the strand, says the chroniclers, the landing was affected without obstacles, and not a Saxon soldier appeared on the coast. William was the last to leave his ship, and on setting foot on the sand he made a false step and fell. Bad sign was mettered around him. God have us in his keeping! What say you lords? cried William. By the glory of God I have grasped this land with my hands. All that there is of it is ours. With what forces William undertook the conquest of England? How many ships composed his fleet? And how many men were aboard the ships? Are questions impossible to be decided with any precision? As we have frequently before had occasion to remark, amidst the exaggerations and disagreements of chroniclers. Robert Wase reports, in his romance of brew, that he had heard from his father, one of William's servants, on this expedition, that the fleet numbered six hundred and ninety-six vessels, but he had found in divers writings that there were more than three thousand. After Augustine Thierry, after his learned researches, says, in his history of the conquest of England by the Normans, that four hundred vessels of four sails and more than a thousand transport ships moved out into the open sea, to the sound of trumpets and of a great cry of joy raised by sixty thousand throats. It is probable that the estimate of the fleet is pretty accurate, and that of the army exaggerated. We saw in eighteen-thirty what efforts and pains it required amidst the power and intelligent ability of modern civilization to transport from France to Algeria thirty-seven thousand men aboard three squadrons, comprising six hundred and seventy-five ships of all sorts. Granted that in the eleventh century there was more haphazard than in the nineteenth, and that there was less care for human life on the eve of a war, still, without a doubt, the armament of Normandy in ten-sixty-six was not to be compared without a France in eighteen-thirty, and yet William's intention was to conquer England, whereas Charles the Tenth thought only of chastising the day of Algiers. Whilst William was making for the southern coast of England, Harold was repairing by forced marches to the north in order to defend against the rebellion of his brother Tostig and the invasion of a Norwegian army. His short-lived kingship thus menaced at two ends of the country by two formidable enemies. On the twenty-fifth of September, ten-sixty-six, he gained at York a brilliant victory over his northern foe, and wounded as he was, he no sooner learned that Duke William had on the twenty-ninth pitched his camp and planted his flag at Pevensey, than he set out in haste for the south. As he approached, William received, from what source is not known, this message. King Harold hath given battle to his brother Tostig and the king of Norway. He hath slain them both, and hath destroyed their army. He is returning at the head of numerous and valiant warriors, against whom thine own, I trove, will be worth no more than wretched curse. Thou passest for a man of wisdom and prudence, be not rash, plunge not thyself into danger. I adjure thee to abide in thy entrenchments, and not to come really to blows. I thank thy master, answered William, for his prudent counsel, albeit he might have given it to me without insult. Carry him back this reply. I will not hide behind ramparts. I will come to blows with Harold as soon as I may, and with the aid of Heaven's good will I would trust in the valor of my men against his, even though I had but ten thousand to lead against his sixty thousand. But the proud confidence of William did not affect his prudence. He received from Harold a message wherein the Saxon, affirming his right to the kingship by virtue of the Saxon laws and the last words of King Edward, summoned him to evacuate England with all his people, on which condition alone he engaged to preserve friendship with him, and all agreements between them as to Normandy. After having come to an understanding with his barons, William maintained his right to the crown of England by virtue of the first decision of King Edward, and the oaths of Harold himself. I am ready, said he, to uphold my cause against him by the forms of justice, either according to the law of the Normans or according to that of the Saxons, as he pleases. If by virtue of equity Normans or English decide that Harold has a right to possess the kingdom, let him possess it in peace. If they acknowledge that it is to me that the kingdom ought to belong, let him give it up to me. If he refuses these conditions, I do not think it just that my people or his, who are not a whit to blame for our quarrel, should slay one another in battle. I am ready to maintain at the price of my head against his, that it is to me and not to him that the kingdom of England belongs. At this proposition Harold was troubled, and remained a while without replying. Then as the monk was urgent, let the Lord God, said he, judge this day betwixt me and William as to what is just. The negotiation continued, and William summed it all up in these terms, which the monk reported to Harold in presence of the English chieftains, My Lord, the Duke of Normandy bideth you to do one of these things. Give up to him the kingdom of England, and take his daughter in marriage, as you swear to him on the Holy Relics. Or respecting the question between him and you, submit yourself to the Pope's decision, or fight with him body to body, and let him who is victorious and forces his enemy to yield have the kingdom. Harold replied, without opinion or advice taken, says the Chronicle, I will not cede him the kingdom, I will not abide by the Pope's award, and I will not fight with him. William, still in concert with his barons, made a farther advance. If Harold will come to an agreement with me, he said, I will leave him all the territory beyond the Humber, toward Scotland. My Lord, said the barons to the Duke, make an end of these parlies. If we must fight, let it be soon, for every day come folk to Harold. By my faith, said the Duke, if we agree not on terms today, tomorrow we will join battle. The third proposal for an agreement was as little successful as the former two. On both sides there was no belief in peace, and they were eager to decide the battle once for all. Some of the Saxon chieftains advised Harold to fall back on London, and ravage all the country, so as to starve out the invaders. By my faith, said Harold, I will not destroy the country I have in keeping. I, with my people, will fight. A Bid in London, said his younger brother, Goehrth. Thou canst not deny that, perforce, or by free will, thou didst swear to Duke William. But as for us we have sworn not. We will fight for our country. If we alone fight, thy cause will be good in any case. If we fly, thou shalt rally us. If we fall, thou shalt avenge us. Harold rejected this advice, considering it shame to his past life to turn his back, whatever the peril. Certain of his people, who he had sent to recognitor, the Norman army, returned, saying that there were more priests in William's camp than warriors in his own. For the Normans at this period wore shaven chins and short hair, whilst the English let hair and beard grow. You do ere, said Harold, these be not priests, but good-men at arms, who will show us what they can do. On the eve of the battle, the Saxons passed the night in amusement, eating, drinking, and singing, with great uproar. The Normans, on the contrary, were preparing their arms, saying their prayers, and confessing to their priests, all who would. On the fourteenth of October, ten-sixty-six, when Duke William put on his armour, his coat of mail was given to him the wrong way. Bad Omen, cried some of his people, if such a thing had happened to us, we would not fight to-day. Be not disquieted, said the Duke. I have never believed in sorcerers and diviners, and I never liked them. I believe in God, and in him I put my trust. He assembled his men at arms, and setting himself upon a high place, so that all might hear him, he said to them, my true and loyal friends, ye have crossed the seas for love of me, and for that I cannot thank ye as I ought, but I will make what return I may, and what I have ye shall have. I am not come only to take what I demanded, or to get my rights, but to punish felonies, treasons, and breaches of faith committed against our people by the men of this country. Think moreover what great honour ye will have to-day if the day be ours. And b'think ye that, if ye be disconfident, ye be dead men without help, for ye have not, whether ye may retreat, seeing that our ships be broken up, and our mariners be here with us. He who flies will be a dead man, he who fights will be saved. God's sake let each man do his duty, trust we in God, and the day will be ours. The address was too long for the duke's faithful comrade, William Fitz Osborne. My Lord, said he, we dally, let us all to arms and forward, forward. The army got in motion, starting from the hill of Telham, or Heathland, according to Mr. Freeman, marching to attack the English on the opposite hill of Semlac. A Norman, called Telfair, who sang very well and rode a horse which was very fast, came up to the duke. My Lord, said he, I have served you long, and you owe me for all my service. Pay me to-day, and it please you, grant unto me, for recompense and full, to strike the first blow in the battle. I grant it, quote the duke. So Telfair darted before him, singing the deeds of Charlemagne, of Rowland, of Oliver, and of the vassals who fell at Ranskbaal. And as he sang, he played with his sword, throwing it up into the air and catching it in his right hand. And the Normans followed, repeating his songs and crying, God help, God help. The English, entrenched upon a plateau towards which the Normans were ascending, awaited the assault, shouting and defying the foe. The battle thus begun lasted nine hours, with equal obstinacy on both sides, and varied success from hour to hour. Harold, though wounded at the commencement of the fray, did not cease for a moment to fight, on foot, with his two brothers beside him, and around him the troops of London, who had the privilege of forming the king's guard when he delivered a battle. Rudley repulsed at the first charge, some bodies of Norman troops fell back in disorder, and a rumour spread amongst them that the duke was slain. But William threw himself before the fugitives, and taking off his helmet cried, Look at me, here I am, I live, and by God's help will conquer. So they returned to the combat. But the English were firm, the Normans could not force their entrenchments, and William ordered his men to feign a retreat, and all but a flight. At this site the English bore down in pursuit, and still Norman fled in Saxon pursuit, until a trumpeter, who had been ordered by the duke thus to turn back the Normans, began to sound the recall. Then were seen the Normans turning back to face the English, and attacking them with their swords, and amongst the English some flying, some dying, some asking mercy in their own tongue. The struggle once more became general and fierce. William had three horses killed under him, but he jumped immediately upon a fresh steed, and left not long avenge the death of that which had but lately carried him. At last the entrenchments of the English were stormed. Harold fell mortally wounded by an arrow which pierced his skull. His two brothers and his bravest comrades fell at his side. The fight was prolonged between the English dispersed and the Normans remorselessly pursuing. The standards sent from Rome to the duke of Normandy had replaced the Saxon fag on the very spot where Harold had fallen. And all around the ground continued to get covered with dead and dying, fruitless victims of the passions of the combatants. Next day William went over the field of battle, and he was heard to say in a tone of mingled triumph and sorrow, here is verily a lake of blood. There was, long after the battle of Sennlach, or Hastings, as it is commonly called, a patriotic superstition in the country to the effect that, when the rain had moistened the soil, there were to be seen traces of blood on the ground where it had taken place. CHAPTER XV CONQUEST OF INGLAND by the Normans, Part III Having thus secured the victory, William had his tent pitched at the very point where the standard which had come from Rome had replaced the Saxon banner, and he passed the night supping and chatting with his chieftains, not far from the corpses scattered over the battlefield. Next day it was necessary to attend to the burial of all these dead, conquerors or conquered. William was full of care and affection towards his comrades, and on the eve of the battle, during a long and arduous reconnaissance which he had undertaken with some of them, he had insisted upon carrying, for some time, in addition to his own cuirass, that of his faithful William Fitzosburn, who he saw was fatigued in spite of his usual strength. But towards his enemies William was harsh and resentful. Githa, Harold's mother, sent to him to ask for her son's corpse, offering for it its weight in gold. Nay, said William, Harold was a perjurer. Let him have for burial placed the sand of the shore where he was so madly feigned to rule. Two Saxon monks from Waltham Abbey, which had been founded by Harold, came by their abbot's order and claimed for their church the remains of their benefactor, and William, indifferent as he had been to a mother's grief, would not displease an abbey. But when the monks set about finding the body of Harold, there was none to recognize it, and they had recourse to a young girl, Edith, swan's neck, whom Harold had loved. She discovered among the corpses her lover's mutilated body, and the monks bored away to the church at Waltham, where it was buried. Some time later a rumour was spread abroad that Harold was wounded, and carried to a neighbouring castle, perhaps dober, once he went to the Abbey of St. John at Chester, where he lived a long while in a solitary cell, and where William the Conqueror's second son, Henry I, the third Norman king of England, one day went to see him and had an interview with him. But this legend, in which there is nothing chronologically impossible, rests on no sound basis of evidence, and is discounted by all contemporary accounts. Before following up his victory, William resolved to perpetuate the remembrance of it by a religious monument, and he decreed the foundation of an abbey on the very field of the Battle of Hastings, from which it took its name, Battle Abbey. He endowed this abbey with all the neighbouring territory within the radius of a league, the very spots as his charter, which gave me my crown. He made it free of the jurisdiction of any prelate, dedicated it to St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of the soldiers of Gaul, and ordered that there should be depositate in its archives a register containing the names of all the lords, knights, and men of Mark who had accompanied him on his expedition. When the building of the abbey began, the builders observed a want of water, and they notified William of the fact. Work away, said he, if God grant me life I will make such good provision for the place that more wine shall be found there than there is water in other monasteries. It was not everything, however, to be victorious. It was still necessary to be recognised as king. When the news of the defeated Hastings and the death of Harold was spread abroad in the country, the emotion was lively and seemed to be profound. The great Saxon National Council, the Whittingamont, assembled at London, the remnants of the Saxon army rallied there, and search was made for other kings than the Norman Duke. Harold left two sons, very young and not in a conditioned arraign, but his two brothers-in-law, Edwin and Morcar, held dominion in the north of England, whilst the southern provinces and amongst them the city of London had a popular aspirant, a nephew of Edward the Confessor, in Edgar, surnamed Athenley, the noble, the illustrious, as the descendant of several kings. What with these different pretensions there were discussion, hesitation, and delay, but at last the young Edgar prevailed, and was proclaimed king. Meanwhile, William was advancing with his army, slowly, prudently, as a man resolved to risk nothing in calculating upon the natural results of his victory. At some points he encountered attempts at resistance, but he easily overcame them, occupied successively Romney, Dover, Canterbury, and Rochester, appeared before London without trying to enter it, and moved on Winchester, which was the residence of Edward the Confessor's widow, Queen Editha, who had received that important city as dowry. Through respect for her, William, who presented himself in the character of a relative and heir of King Edward, did not enter the place, and merely called upon the inhabitants to take the oath of allegiance to him and do a mommage, which they did with the Queen's consent. William returned towards London and commenced the siege, or rather investment of it, by establishing his camp at Burkhamstead, in the county of Hartford. He entered before long into secret communication with an influential Burgess, named Ansgard, an old man who had seen service, and who, riddled with wounds, had himself carried about the streets in a litter. Ansgard had but little difficulty in inducing the authorities of London to make Pacific overtures to the Duke, and William had still less difficulty in convincing the messenger of the moderation of his designs. The King salutes you, and offers you peace, said Ansgard to the municipal authorities of London, on his return from the camp. To the king who hath no peer, he is handsomer than the sun, wiser than Solomon, more active and greater than Charlemagne. And the enthusiastic poet adds that the people, as well as the Senate, eagerly welcomed these words, and renounced both of them the young king they had but lately proclaimed. Facts were quick in responding to this quickly produced impression. A formal deputation was sent to William's camp. The archbishops of Canterbury and York, many other prelates and layeck chieftains, the principal citizens of London, the two brothers-in-law of Harold, Edwin and Morkar, and the young king of yesterday, Edgar Atheling himself, formed a part of it, and they brought to William Edgar Atheling his abdication, and all the others their submission, with an express invitation to William to have himself made king. For we be want, said they, to serve a king, and we wish to have a king for Lord. William received them in presence of the chieftains of his army, and with great show of moderation in his desires. Affairs, said he, be troubled still. There be still certain rebels. I desire rather the peace of the kingdom than the crown. I would that my wife should be crowned with me. The Norman chieftains murmured whilst they smiled, and one of them, an Aquitanian, Amri de Tours, cried out, It is passing modest to ask soldiers if they wish their chief to be king. Soldiers are never, or very seldom, called to such deliberations. Let what we desire be done as soon as possible. William yielded to the entreaties of the Saxon deputies, and to the councils of the Norman chieftains. But prudent still, before going in person to London, he sent thithers some of his officers, with orders to have built there immediately, on the banks of the Thames, at a point which he indicated, a fort where he might establish himself in safety. That fort, in the course of time, became the Tower of London. When William set out, some days afterwards, to make his entry into the city, he found, on his way to St. Albans, the road blocked with huge trunks of trees recently felled. What means this barricade in thy domains? He demanded of the Abbot of St. Albans, a Saxon noble. I did what was my duty to my birth and mission, replied the rank. If others of my rank and condition had done as much, as they ought and could have done, thou hath not penetrated so far into our country. On entering London, after all these delays and all these precautions, William fixed for his coronation upon Christmas day, December 25, 1066. Either by desire of the prelate himself, or by William's own order, it was not the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stigand, who presided, according to custom, at the ceremony. The duty devolved upon the Archbishop of York, Aldrid, who had but lately anointed Edgar Atheling. At the appointed hour William arrived at Westminster Abbey, the latest work in the burial place of Edward the Confessor. The conqueror marched between two hedges of Norman soldiers, behind whom stood a crowd of people, cold and sad, though full of curiosity. A numerous cavalry guarded the approaches to the church and the quarters adjoining. Two hundred and sixty counts, barons, and knights of Normandy went in with the Duke. Geoffrey, Bishop of Conteneys, demanded in French of the Normans, if they would that their Duke should take the title of King of the English. The Archbishop of York demanded of the English in the Saxon tongue, if they would have for King the Duke of Normandy. Noisy acclamations arose in the church and resounded outside. The soldiery, posted in the neighborhood, took the confused roar for a symptom of something wrong and in their suspicious rage set fire to the neighboring houses. The flames spread rapidly. The people who were rejoicing in the church caught the alarm and a multitude of men and women of every rank flung themselves out of the edifice. Alone and trembling, the bishops with some clerics and monks remained before the altar and accomplished the work of anointing upon the King's head, himself trembling, says the Chronicle. Nearly all the rest who were present ran to the fire, some to extinguish it, others to steal and pillage in the midst of consternation. William terminated the ceremony by taking the usual oath of Saxon Kings at their coronation, adding there too, as of his own motion, a promise to treat the English people according to their own laws, and as well as they had ever been treated by the best of their own Kings. Then he went forth from the church, King of England. We will pursue no farther the life of William the Conqueror, or henceforth it belongs to the history of England, not of France. We have entered so far as he was concerned into pretty long details, because we were bound to get a fair understanding of the event and of the man, not only because of their luster at the time, but especially because of the serious and long-felt consequences entailed upon France, England, and, we may say, Europe. We do not care just now to trace out these consequences in all their bearings, but we would like to mark out with precision their chief features, in as much as they exercised for centuries a determining influence upon the destinies of two great nations, and upon the course of modern civilization. As to France, the consequences of the conquest of England by the Normans were clearly pernicious, and they have not yet entirely disappeared. It was a great evil, as early as the eleventh century, that the Duke of Normandy, one of the great French lords, one of the great vassals of the King of France, should at the same time become King of England, and thus received in a session of rank and power which could not fail to render, more complicated and more stormy, his relations with his French suzerain. From the eleventh to the fourteenth century, from Philip I to Philip de Valois, this position gave rise between the two crowns and the two states, to questions, to quarrels, to political struggles, and to wars, which were a frequent source of trouble in France to the government and to the people. The evil and the peril became far greater still when, in the fourteenth century, there arose between France and England, between Philip de Valois and Edward III, a question touching the secession to the throne of France, and the application or negation of the Salic Law. Then there commenced between the two crowns and the two peoples, that war which was to last more than a hundred years, was to bring upon France the saddest days of her history, and was to be ended only by the inspired heroism of a young girl who, alone in the name of her God and his saints, restored confidence and victory to her king and her country. Joan of Arc, at the cost of her life, brought to the most glorious conclusion the longest and bloodiest struggle that has devastated France, and sometimes compromised her glory. Such events, even when they are over, do not cease to weigh heavily for a long while upon a people. The struggles between the kings of England, dukes of Normandy, and the kings of France, and the long war of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries for the secession to the throne of France, engendered what historians have called the rivalry between France and England, and this rivalry, having been admitted as a natural and inevitable fact, became the permanent incubus, and, at diverse epics, the scourge of French national existence. Undoubtedly there are, between great and energetic neighbors, common interests and tendencies, which easily become the seeds of jealousy and strife. But there are also, between such nations, common interests and common sentiments, which tend to harmony and peace. The wisdom and ability of governments, and of nations themselves, are shown in devoting themselves to making the grounds of harmony and peace stronger than those of discord and war. Anyhow, common sense and moral sense forbid differences of interests and tendencies to be set up as a principle upon which to establish general and permanent rivalry, and, by consequence, a systematic hostility and national enmity. And the further civilization and the connections between different people proceed with this development, the more necessary, and at the same time possible, it becomes to raise the interests and sentiments which would hold them together above those which would keep them asunder, and to thus found a policy of reciprocal equity and of peace in place of a policy of hostile precautions and continual strife. I have witnessed, says Mr. Grousseau, in the course of my life both these policies. I have seen the policy of systematic hostility, the policy practised by the Emperor Napoleon I, with as much ability and brilliancy as it was capable of, and I have seen it result in the greatest disaster France ever experienced. And even after the evidence of its errors and calamities, this policy has still left amongst us deep traces and raised serious obstacles to the policy of reciprocal equity, liberty and peace which we labor to support, and of which the nation felt, though almost against the grain, the justice and the necessity. In that feeling we recognise the lamentable results of the old historic causes which have just been pointed out, and the lasting perils arising from those blind passions which hurry people away, and keep them back from their most pressing interests and their most honourable sentiments. In spite of appearances to the contrary, and in view of her future interests, England was, in the eleventh century, by the very fact of the conquest she underwent, in a better position than France. She was conquered it is true, and conquered by a foreign chieftain and a foreign army, but France also had been, for several centuries previously, a prey to conquest, and under circumstances much more unfavourable than those under which the Norman conquest had found and placed England. In the Goths, the Burgundians, the Franks, the Saxons and the Normans themselves invaded and disputed over Gaul, what was the character of the event? Barbarians, up to that time vagabonds, or nearly so, were flooding in upon populations disorganised and enervated. On the side of the German victors, no fixity in social life, no general or anything like regular government, no nation really cemented and constituted, but individuals in a state of dispersion and of almost absolute independence. On the side of the vanquished Gallo-Romans the old political ties dissolved, no strong power, no vital liberty, the lower classes in slavery, the middle classes ruined, the upper classes depreciated. Amongst the barbarian society was scarcely commencing, with the subjects of the Roman Empire it no longer existed. Charlemagne's attempt to reconstruct it by rallying beneath a new empire both victors and vanquished was a failure. Feudal anarchy was the first and the necessary step out of barbaric anarchy and towards a renewal of social order. It was not so in England, when in the eleventh century William transported thither his government and his army. A people but lately come out of barbarism, conquered on that occasion, a people still half barbarous. Their primitive origin was the same, their institutions were, if not similar, at any rate analogous, there was no fundamental antagonism in their habits. The English chieftains lived in their domains an idle hunting life surrounded by their leechmen, just as the Norman barons lived. Society amongst both the former and the latter was founded, however unrefined and irregular it still was, and neither the former nor the latter had lost the flavor and the usages of their ancient liberties. A certain superiority in point of organization and social discipline belonged to the Norman conquerors, but the conquered Anglo-Saxons were neither in a temper to allow themselves to be enslaved nor out of condition for defending themselves. The conquest was destined to entail cruel evils, a long oppression, but it could not bring about either the dissolution of the two peoples into petty, lawless groups or the permanent humiliation of one in presence of the other. There were, at one and the same time, elements of government and resistance, causes of fusion and unity in the very midst of the struggle. We are now about to anticipate ages and get a glimpse in their development of the consequences which attended this difference so profound in the position of France and of England at the time of the formation of the two states. In England, immediately after the Norman conquest, two general forces are confronted, those to wit of the two peoples. The Anglo-Saxon people is attached to its ancient institutions, a mixture of feudalism and liberty which becomes its security. The Norman army assumes organization on English soil according to the feudal system which had been its own in Normandy. A principle of authority and a principle of resistance thus exist, from the very first, in the community and in the government. Before long the principle of resistance gets displaced. The strife between the peoples continues, but a new struggle arises between the Norman king and his barons. The Norman kingship, strong in its growth, would fame to come tyrannical, but its tyranny encounters a resistance, also strong, since the necessity for defending themselves against the Anglo-Saxons has caused the Norman barons to take up the practice of acting in concert, and has not permitted them to set themselves up as petty, isolated sovereigns. The spirit of association receives development in England, the ancient institutions have maintained it against the English landholders, and the inadequacy of individual resistance has made it prevalent amongst the Norman barons. The unity which springs from community of interests and from junction of forces against equals becomes a counter-poise to the unity of the sovereign power. To sustain the struggle with success, the aristocratic coalition formed against the tyrannical kingship has needed the assistance of the landed proprietors, great and small, English and Norman, and it has not been able to dispense with getting their rights recognized as well as its own. Meanwhile the struggle is becoming complicated. There is a division of parties. A portion of the barons rally round the threatened kingship. Sometimes it is the feudal aristocracy, and sometimes it is the king that summons and sees flocking to the rescue the common people, first of the country, then of the towns. The democratic element thus penetrates into and keeps growing in both society and government, at one time quietly and through the stolid influence of necessity, at another noisily and by means of revolutions, powerful indeed, but nevertheless restrained within certain limits. The fusion of the two peoples and the different social classes is little by little attaining accomplishment. It is little by little bringing about the perfect formation of representative government, with its various component parts, royalty, aristocracy, and democracy, each invested with the rights and the strength necessary for their functions. The end of the struggle has been arrived at. Constitutional monarchy is founded by the triumph of their language and of their primitive liberties the English have conquered their conquerors. It is written in her history, and especially in her history at the date of the 11th century, how England found her point of departure and her first elements of success in the long labor she performed, in order to arrive in 1688 at a free and in our days at a liberal government. France pursued her end by other means and in the teeth of other fortunes. She always desired and always sought for free government under the form of constitutional monarchy, and in following her history step by step there will be seen, often disappearing and ever reappearing, the efforts made by the country for the accomplishment of her hope. Why then did not France sooner and more completely attain what she had so often attempted? Amongst the different causes of this long miscalculation, we will dwell for the present only on the historical reason just now indicated. France did not find, as England did, in the primitive elements of French society, the conditions and means of the political system to which she never ceased to aspire. In order to obtain the moderate measure of internal order without which society could not exist, in order to ensure the progress of her civil laws and her material civilization, in order even to enjoy those pleasures of the mind for which she thirst so much, France was constantly obliged to have recourse to the kingly authority and to that almost absolute monarchy which was far from satisfying her even when she could not do without it, and when she worshipped it with an enthusiasm rather literary than political, as was the case under Louis XIV. It was through the refined rather than profound development of her civilization and through the zeal of her intellectual movement that France was, at length, impelled not only towards the political system to which she had so long aspired, but into the boundless ambition of the unlimited revolution which she brought about and with which she inoculated all Europe. It is in the first steps towards the formation of the two societies, French and English, and in the elements so very different of their earliest existence that we find the principal cause for their long-continued diversity in institutions and destinies. In 1823, forty-seven years ago, after having studied, says Michoud Guizot, in my essays upon a comparative history of France and England, the great fact which we have just now attempted to make clearly understood, I conclude my labour by saying, Before our revolution, this difference between the political fates of France and England might have saddened a Frenchman. But now, in spite of the evils we have suffered and in spite of those we shall yet perhaps suffer, there is no room so far as we are concerned for such sadness. The advances of social equality and the enlightenments of civilization in France preceded political liberty, and it will be thus the more general and the purer. France may reflect without regret upon any history, her own has always been glorious, and the future promised to her will assuredly recompense her for all she has hitherto lacked. In eighteen-seventy, after the experiences and not withstanding the sorrows of my long life, I have still confidence in our country's future. Never be it forgotten that God helps only those who help themselves and who deserve his aid. The Crusades, their origin and their success, part one. Amongst the great events of European history, none was for a longer time in preparation or more naturally brought about than the Crusades. Christianity, from her earliest days, had seen in Jerusalem her sacred cradle. It had been in times past the home of her ancestors, the Jews, and the centre of their history, and afterwards the scene of the life, death, and resurrection of her divine founder. Jerusalem became, more and more, the holy city. To go to Jerusalem, to visit the Mount of Olives, Calvary, and the Tomb of Jesus, was, in their most evil days, and in the midst of their obscurity and their martyrdoms, a pious passion of the early Christians. When, under Constantine, Christianity had ascended from the cross to the throne, Jerusalem had fresh attractions for Christian faith and Christian curiosity. Chappels covered and surrounded the Holy Sepulchre, and at Bethlehem, Nazareth, Mount Tabor, and nearly all the places which Jesus had consecrated by His presence and His miracles, were seen to rise up churches, chapels, and monuments dedicated to the memory of them. The Emperor Constantine's mother, St. Helena, was at 78 years of age the first royal pilgrim to the holy places. After the pagan revival, vainly attempted by the Emperor Julian, the number and zeal of the Christian visitors to Jerusalem were redoubled. At the beginning of the fifth century St. Jerome wrote, from his retreat at Bethlehem, that Judea overflowed with pilgrims, and that round about the Holy Sepulchre were heard sung in diverse tongues the praises of the Lord. He, however, gave but scant encouragement to his friends to make the trip. The Court of Heaven, he wrote to St. Paulinus, is as open in Britain as at Jerusalem, and the disorder which sometimes accompanied the numerous assemblages of pilgrims became such that several of the most illustrious fathers of the Church, and amongst others St. Augustine and St. Gregory of Nissa, asserted themselves to dissuade the faithful. Take no thought, said Augustine, for long voyages. Go where your faith is. It is not by ship but by love that we go to Him who is everywhere. Events soon rendered the pilgrimage to Jerusalem difficult, and for some time impossible. At the commencement of the seventh century the Greek Empire was at war with the sovereigns of Persia, successors of Cyrus, and chiefs of the religion of Zoroaster. One of them, Kostros II, invaded Judea, took Jerusalem, led away captive the inhabitants together with their patriarch, Zacharias, and even carried off to Persia the precious relic which was regarded as the wood of the True Cross, and which had been discovered nearly three centuries before by the Empress Helena whilst excavations were making on Calvary for the erection of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. But fourteen years later, after several victories over the Persians, the Greek Emperor Heraclius retook Jerusalem and re-entered Constantinople in triumph with the coffer containing the sacred relic. He next year, in 629, carried it back to Jerusalem and bore it upon his own shoulders to the top of Calvary, and on this occasion was instituted the feast of the exultation of the Holy Cross. Great was the joy in Christendom, and the pilgrimagees to Jerusalem resumed their course. But precisely at this epoch there appeared an enemy far more formidable for the Christians than the sectaries of Zoroaster. In 622, Muhammad founded Islam, and some years after his death, in 638, the second of the Caliphs, his successors, Omar, sent two of his generals, Khalid and Abu Obadi, to take Jerusalem. For to the Muslims also, Jerusalem was a holy city. Said it was said had been thither, it was thence indeed that he had started on his nocturnal ascent to heaven. On approaching the walls, the Arabs repeated these words from the Koran, enter we the holy land which God hath promised us. The siege lasted four months. The Christians at last surrendered, but only to Omar in person, who came from Medina to receive their submission. A capitulation concluded with their patriarchs, Sophronius guaranteed them their lives, their property, and their churches. When the draft of the treaty was completed, Omar said to the patriarch, conduct me to the temple of David. Omar entered Jerusalem preceded by the patriarch, and followed by four thousand warriors, followers of the prophet, wearing no other arms but their swords. Sophronius took him, first of all, to the church of the resurrection. Behold! said he, the temple of David. Thou sayest not true, said Omar, after a few moments' reflection. The prophet gave me a description of the temple of David, and it tallyeth not with the building I now see. The patriarch then conducted him to the church of Zion. Here he said as the temple of David. It is a lie rejoined Omar and went his way, directing his step toward the gate named Bob Mohammed. The spot on which now stands the mosque of Omar was so encumbered with filth that the steps leading to the street were covered with it, and that the rubbish reached almost to the top of the vault. You can only get in here by crawling, said the patriarch. Be it so, answered Omar. The patriarch went first. Omar with his people followed, and they arrived at the space which at this day forms the forecourt of the mosque. There everyone could stand upright. After having turned his eyes to left and right, and attentively examined the place, Allah akbar, cried Omar, here is the temple of David, described to me by the prophet. He found the sakra, the rock which forms the summit of Mount Moriah, and which, left alone after the different destructions of the different temples, became the theme of a multitude of traditions and legends, Jewish and Muslim, covered with filth, heaped up there by the Christians through hatred of the Jews. Omar spread his cloak over the rock, and began to sweep it, and all the Muslims in his train followed his example. The mosque of Omar rose up on the side of Solomon's temple. The Christians retained the practice of their religion in their churches, but they were obliged to conceal their crosses and their sacred books. The bell no longer summoned the faithful to prayer, and the pomp of ceremonies was forbidden them. It was far worse when Omar, the most moderate of Muslim fanatics, had left Jerusalem. The faithful were driven from their houses, and insulted in their churches. Editions were made to the tribute they had to pay to the new masters of Palestine. They were prohibited from carrying arms and riding on horseback. A girdle of leather, which they might not lay aside, was their badge of servitude. Their conquerors brook to not even that the Christians should speak the Arab tongue, reserved for disciples of the Koran, and the Christian people of Jerusalem had not the right of nominating their own patriarch, without the intervention of the Saracens. From the seventh to the eleventh century the situation remained very much the same. The Muslims, caliphs of Egypt or Persia, continued in possession of Jerusalem, and the Christians, native inhabitants or foreign visitors, continued to be oppressed, harassed, and humiliated there. At two periods their condition was temporarily better. At the commencement of the ninth century Charlemagne reached even there with greatness of his mind and of his power. It was not only in his own land and his own kingdom, says Eganhardt, that he scattered those gratuitous largeses which the Greeks call alms, but beyond the seas, in Syria, in Egypt, in Africa, at Jerusalem, at Alexandria, at Carthage, wherever he knew that there were Christians living in poverty, he had compassion on their misery, and he delighted to send them money. In one of his capitularies of the year 810 we find this paragraph, alms to be sent to Jerusalem to repair the churches of God. If Charlemagne was so careful to seek the friendship of the kings beyond the seas, it was above all in order to obtain for the Christians living under their rule help and relief. He kept up so close a friendship with Haroun al-Rashid, king of Persia, that this prince preferred his good graces to the alliance of the sovereigns of the earth. Accordingly, when the ambassadors whom Charles had sent with presence to visit the sacred tomb of our divine Savior, and the sight of the resurrection, present themselves before him, and expounded to him their master's wish, Haroun did not content himself with entertaining Charles's request. He wished, besides, to give up to him the complete proprietorship of those places hallowed by the certification of our redemption, and he sent him, with the most magnificent presence, the keys of the holy sepulcher. At the end of the same century, another Christian sovereign, far less powerful and less famous, John Ximises, Emperor of Constantinople, in a war against the Muslims of Asia, penetrated into Galilee, made himself master of Tiberius, Nazareth, and Mount Tabor, and received a deputation which brought him the keys of Jerusalem. And we have placed, he says himself, garrisons in all the district lately subjected to our rule. These were but strokes of foreign intervention, giving the Christians of Jerusalem gleams of hope rather than lasting diminutions of their miseries. However, it is certain that, during this epoch, pilgrimages multiplied, and were often accomplished without obstacle. It was from France, England, and Italy that most of the pilgrims went, and some of them wrote, or caused to be written, an account of their trip. Amongst others the Italian Saint Valentin, the English Saint Wallabad, and the French Bishop Saint Occulf, who had as companion a Burgundian hermit named Peter, a singular resemblance in quality and name to the zealous apostle of the Crusade three centuries later. The most curious of these narratives is that of a French monk, Bernard, a pilgrim of about the year 870. There is at Jerusalem, says he, a hospice where admittance is given to all who come to visit the place for devotion's sake, and who speak the Roman tongue. A church, dedicated to St. Mary, is harred by the hospice, and possesses a very noble library, which it oweeth to the zeal of the Emperor Charles the Great. This pious establishment had attached to it fields, vineyards, and a garden situated in the valley of Jehoshaphat. But whilst there were a few isolated cases of Christians thus going to satisfy, in the East, their pious and inquisitive zeal, the Muslims, equally ardent as believers and as warriors, carried westward their creed and their arms, established themselves in Spain, penetrated to the very heart of France, and brought on between Islamism and Christianity that grand struggle in which Charles Martel gained, at Portier, the victory for the Cross. It was really a definitive victory, and yet it did not end the struggle. The Muslims remained masters in Spain, and continued to infest southern France, Italy, and Sicily, preserving even at certain points posts which they used as starting points for distant ravages. Far then from calming down and resulting in Pacific relations, the hostility between the two races became more and more active and determined. There they opposed, fought, and oppressed one another, inflamed one against the other by the double feelings of faith and ambition, hatred and fear. To this general state of affairs came to be added, about the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh century, incidents best calculated to aggravate the evil. Hakim, Caliph of Egypt from 966 to 1021, persecuted the Christians, especially at Jerusalem, with all the violence of a fanatic and all the capriciousness of a despot. He ordered them to wear upon their necks a wooden cross, five pounds in weight. He forbade them to ride on any animal but mules or asses, and without assigning any motive for his acts confiscated their goods and carried off their children. It was told to him one day that, when the Christians assembled in the temple at Jerusalem to celebrate Easter, the priests of the church rubbed balsam oil upon the iron chain which held up the lamp over the tomb of Christ, and afterwards set fire from the roof to the end of the chain. The fire stole down to the wick of the lamp and lighted it. Then they shouted with admiration, as if fire from heaven had come down upon the tomb, and they glorified their faith. Hakim ordered the instant demolition of the church of the Holy Sebelker, and it was accordingly demolished. Another time a dead dog had been laid at the door of a mosque, and the multitude accused the Christians of this insult. Hakim ordered them all to be put to death. The soldiers were preparing to execute the order when a young Christian said to his friends, It were too grievous that the whole church should perish, it were better that one should die for all, only promised to bless my memory year by year. He proclaimed himself alone to blame for the insult, and was accordingly alone put to death. It is from this story of the historian William of Tyre that Tazzo, in his Jerusalem Delivered, has drawn the admirable episode of Alindo and Sophronia, a fine example, and not the only one, of an act of tyranny and an act of virtue inspiring a great poet with the idea of a masterpiece. All the deeds of Hakim were without motive, says the Arab historian Makrisi, and the dreams suggested to him by his frenzy are incapable of reasonable interpretation. These and many other similar stories reached the West, spread amongst the Christian people, and roused them to pity for their brethren in the East, and to wrath against the oppressors. And it was at a critical period in the midst of the pious alarms and desires of atonement excited by the expectation of the end of the world a thousand years after the coming of the Lord, that the Christian population saw this way opened for purchasing a remission of their sins by delivering other Christians from suffering and by avenging the wrongs of their creed. On all sides arose challenges and appeals to the war-like ardor of the faithful. The greatest mind of the age, Gerbert, who had become Pope Sylvester II, constituted himself interpreter of the popular feeling. He wrote, in the name of the Church of Jerusalem, a letter addressed to the Universal Church, To work, then, soldier of Christ, be our standard barrier and our champion, And if with arms thou canst not do so, aid us with thy words, thy wealth, What is it pray that thou givest, and to whom pray dost thou give? Of thine abundance thou givest a small matter, and thou givest to him who hath freely given thee all thou possesses. But he will not accept freely that which thou shalt give, for he will multiply thine offering and will pay it back to thee hereafter. Some years after Gerbert, another great mind, the greatest among the popes of the Middle Ages, Gregory VII proclaimed an expedition, at the head of which he would place himself, to go and deliver Jerusalem and the Christians of the East from the insoles and the tyranny of the infidels. Such being the condition of facts and minds, pilgrimages to Jerusalem became, from the 9th to the 11th century, more and more numerous and considerable. It would never have been believed, says the contemporary chronicler Raoul Glamber, that the Holy Sepulchre could attract so prodigious an influx, first the lower classes, then the middle, and afterwards the most potent kings, the counts, the marquises, the prelates, and lastly what had never here to forebeen seen many women, noble or humble, undertook the pilgrimage. In 1026 William Trelfair, Count of Angolume. In 1028, 1035 and 1039 Fouc the Black, Count of Anjou. In 1035 Robert the Magnificent, Duke of Normandy, Father of William the Conqueror. In 1086 Robert the Frison, Count of Flanders, and many other great feudal lords, quitted their estates, or rather their estates, to go and, not deliver, not conquer, but simply visit the Holy Land. It was not long before great numbers were joined to great names. In 1054 Liedbert, Bishop of Cambrae, started for Jerusalem with a following of three thousand Picard or Flemish pilgrims, and in 1064 the Archbishop of Meyens and the bishops of Spire, Colonia, Bamberg, and Utrecht sent out on their way from the borders of the Rhine with more than ten thousand Christians behind them. After having passed through Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Thrace, Constantinople, Asia Minor, and Syria, they were attacked in Palestine by hordes of Arabs, were forced to take refuge in the ruins of an old castle, and were reduced to capitulation. And when at last, preceded by the rumours of their battles and their perils, they arrived at Jerusalem, they were received in triumph by the patriarch, and were conducted to the sounds of timbrels and with the flare of torches to the church of the Holy Sepulcher. The misery they had fallen into excited the pity of the Christians of Asia, and after having lost more than three thousand of their comrades, they returned to Europe to relate their tragic adventures and the dangers of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Amidst this agitation of Western Christendom, in 1076, two years after Pope Gregory VII had proclaimed his approaching expedition to the Holy Land, news arrived in Europe to the effect that the most barbarous of Asiatics and of Muslims, the Turks, after having first served and then ruled the Caliphs of Persia, and afterwards conquered the greater part of the Persian Empire, had hurled themselves upon the Greek Empire, invaded Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, and lately taken Jerusalem, where they practiced against the Christians, old inhabitants or foreign visitors, priests and worshipers, dreadful cruelties and intolerable exactions worse than those of the Persian or Egyptian Caliphs. It often happens that popular emotions, however profound in general, remain barren, just as in the vegetable world many sprouts appear at the surface of the soil and die without having grown infructified. It is not sufficient for the bringing about of great events and practical results that popular aspirations should be merely manifested. It is necessary further that some great soul, some powerful will, should make itself the organ and agent of the public sentiment, and bring it to fecundity by becoming its personification. The Christian passion in the eleventh century for the deliverance of Jerusalem and the triumph of the cross was fortunate in this respect. An obscure pilgrim, at first a soldier, then a married man and father of several children, then a monk and a vowed recluse, Peter the Hermit, who was born in the neighborhood of Amiens, about ten-thirty, had gone, as so many others had, to Jerusalem, to say his prayers there. Struck disconsolate at the sight of the sufferings and insults undergone by the Christians, he had an interview with Simeon, patriarch of Jerusalem, who recognizing in him a man of discretion and full of experience in affairs of the world, set before him in detail all the evils with which the people of God in the holy city were afflicted. Holy Father, said Peter to him, if the Roman church and the princes of the West were informed, by a man of energy and worthy of belief, of all your calamities, of assurity they would essay to apply some remedy thereto by word indeed. Right then to our Lord the Pope and to the Roman church, and to the kings and princes of the West, and strengthen your written testimony by the authority of your seal. As for me, I shrink not from taking upon me a task for the salvation of my soul, and with the help of the Lord I am ready to go and seek out all of them, solicit them, show unto them the immensity of your troubles, and pray them all to hasten on the day of your relief. The patriarch eagerly accepted the pilgrim's offer, and Peter set out, going first of all to Rome, where he handed to Pope Urban II the patriarch's letters, and commenced in that quarter his mission of zeal. The Pope promised him not only support, but active cooperation when the propitious moment for it should arrive. Peter set to work, being still the pilgrim everywhere, in Europe as well as at Jerusalem. He was a man of very small stature, and had outside made but a very poor appearance, yet superior powers swayed this miserable body. He had a quick intellect and a penetrating eye, and he spoke with ease and fluency. We saw him at that time, says his contemporaries Joubert de Nogent, scouring city and town, and preaching everywhere. The people crowded round him, heaped presents upon him, and celebrated his sanctity by such great praises that I remember not that like honour was ever rendered to any other person. He displayed great generosity in the disposal of all things that were given to him. He restored wives to their husbands, not without the addition of gifts from himself, and he re-established, with marvellous authority, peace and good understanding between those who had been at variance. In all that he said or did he seemed to have in him something divine, in so much that people went so far as to pluck hairs from his mule to keep his relics. In the open air he wore a woolen tunic, and over it a surged cloak which came down to his heels. He had his arms and feet bare. He ate little or no bread and lived chiefly on wine and fish. History of France from the earliest times by François Guizot translated by Robert Black Chapter 16 The Crusades, Their Origin and Their Success Part II In 1095, after the preaching errantry of Peter the Hermit, Pope Urban II was at Clermont in Auvergne, residing at the Grand Council, at which 13 archbishops and 205 bishops or abbots were met together, with so many princes and lay lords, that about the middle of the month of November the towns and the villages of the neighborhood were full of people, and diverse were constrained to have their tents and pavilions set up amidst the fields and meadows, notwithstanding that the season and the country were cold to an extreme. The first nine sessions of the Council were devoted to the affairs of the Church in the West, but at the tenth Jerusalem and the Christians of the East became the subject of deliberation. The Pope went out of the Church wherein the Council was assembled, and mounted a platform erected upon a vast open space in the midst of the throng. Peter the Hermit, standing at his side, spoke first, and told the story of his sojourn at Jerusalem, all he had seen of the miseries and humiliations of the Christians, and all he himself had suffered there, for he had been made to pay tribute for admission into the holy city, and for gazing upon the spectacle of the exactions, insults, and tortures he was recounting. After him, Pope Urban II spoke in the French tongue, no doubt, as Peter had spoken, for he was himself a Frenchman, as the majority of those present were, grandeur and populace. He made a long speech entertaining upon the most painful details connected with the sufferings of the Christians of Jerusalem. That royal city which the Redeemer of the human race had made illustrious by his coming, had honored by his residence, had hollowed by his passion, had purchased by his death, had distinguished by his burial. She now demands of you her deliverance, men of France, men from beyond the mountains, nations chosen and beloved of God, write valiant knights, recall the virtues of your ancestors, the virtue and greatness of King Charlemagne, and your other kings. It is from you above all that Jerusalem awaits the help she invokes, for to you, above all nations, God has vouchsafed single glory in arms. Take ye, then, the road to Jerusalem for the remission of your sins, and depart assured of the imperishable glory which awaits you in the kingdom of heaven. From the midst of the throng arose one prolonged and general shout, God willeth it, God willeth it. The boat paused for a moment, and then, making a sign with his hand as if to ask for silence, he continued, if the Lord God were not in your souls, you would not have all uttered the same words. In the battle, then, be those your war cry, those words that came from God. In the army of the Lord, let not be heard, but that one shout, God willeth it, God willeth it. We ordain not, and we advise not, that the journey be undertaken by the old or the weak, or such as be not suited for arms. And let not women set out without their husbands or their brothers. Let the rich help the poor, nor priests, nor clerks may go without the leave of their bishops, and no layman shall commence the march, save with the blessing of his pastor. Whosoever hath a wish to enter upon this pilgrimage, let him wear upon his brow or his breast the cross of the Lord, and let him, who, in accomplishment of his desire, shall be willing to march away, place the cross behind him, between his shoulders. For thus he will fulfill the precept of the Lord, who said, he that doth not take up his cross and follow me, is not worthy of me. The enthusiasm was general and contagious. As the first shout of the crowd had been, and a pious prelate, Adamar, bishop of Pre, was the first to receive the cross from the pope's hands. It was of red cloth or silk, sewn upon the right shoulder of the coat or cloak, or fastened on the front of the helmet, the crowd dispersed to assume it and spread it. Religious enthusiasm was not the only, but the first and the determining motive of the crusade. It is to the honor of humanity, and especially to the honor of the French nation, that it is accessible to the sudden sway of a moral and disinterested sentiment, and resolves without prevision, as well as without premeditation, upon acts which decide for many a long year the course and the fate of a generation. And it may be of a whole people. We have seen in our own day, in the conduct of populace, national assemblies and armies, under the impulse not any longer of religious feeling, but of political and social agitation. France, thus giving herself up to the rush of sentiments, generous indeed and pure, but without the least forecast touching the consequences of the ideas which inspired them, or the acts which they entailed. It is with nations as with armies, the side of glory is that of danger, and great works are wrought at a heavy cost, not only of happiness, but also of virtue. It would be wrong nevertheless to lack respect for and to speak evil of enthusiasm. It not only bears witness to the grandeur of human nature, it justly holds its place and exercises its noble influence in the course of the great events which move across the scene of human errors and vices, according to the vast and inscrutable design of Trade. It is quite certain that the crusaders of the 11th century, in their haste to deliver Jerusalem from the Musulman, were far from foreseeing that a few centuries after their triumph, Jerusalem and the Christian East would fall again beneath the yoke of the Musulman, and their barbaric stagnation. And this future, had they caught but a glimpse of it, would doubtless have chilled their zeal. But it is not a wit the less certain that, in view of the end, their labor was not in vain. For in the panorama of the world's history, the crusades marked the date of the arrest of Islamism, and powerfully contributed to the decisive preponderance of Christian civilization. To religious enthusiasm, there was joined another motive less disinterested, but natural and legitimate, which was the still, very vivid recollection of the evils caused to the Christians of the West by the Musulman invasions in Spain, France, and Italy, and the fear of seeing them begin again. Instinctively, war was carried to the east to keep it from the West, just as Charlemagne had invaded and conquered the country of the Saxons to put an end to their inroads upon the Franks. And this prudent plan availed not only to give the Christians of the West a hope of security, it afforded them the pleasure of vengeance. They were about to pay back alarm for alarm and evil for evil to the enemy from whom they had suffered in the same way. Hatred and pride, as well as piety, obtained satisfaction. There is, moreover, great motive power in a spirit of enterprise and a taste for adventure. Care for nothingness is one of mankind's chief diseases. And if it plays so conspicuous a part in comparatively enlightened and favored communities amidst the labors and the enjoyments of an advanced civilization, its influence was certainly not less in times of intellectual sloth and harshly monotonous existence. To escape therefrom, to satisfy in some sort the energy and curiosity inherent in man, the people of the 11th century had scarcely any resource but war, with its excitement and distant excursions into unknown regions. Thither rushed the masses of the people, whilst the minds which were eager above everything for intellectual movement and for knowledge thronged on the mountain of St. Genevieve to the lectures of Abelard. Need of variety and novelty and an instinctive desire to extend their views and enliven their existence probably made as many crusaders as the feeling against the Muslims and the promptings of piety. The Council of Clermont, at its closing on the 28th of November 1095, had fixed the month of August in the following year and the feast of the assumption for the departure of the crusaders for the Holy Land. But the people's impatience did not brook this waiting, short as it was in view of the greatness and difficulties of the enterprise. As early as the 8th of March 1096, and in the course of the spring, three mobs, rather than armies, set out on the crusade, with a strength, it is said, of 80 or 100,000 persons in one case, and of 15 or 20,000 in the other two, persons not men, for there were amongst them many women and children, whole families in fact, who had left their villages without organization and without provisions, calculating that they would be competent to find their own way, and that he who feeds the young ravens would not suffer to die of want pilgrims wearing his cross. Whenever on the road a town came in sight, the children asked if that were Jerusalem. The first of these mobs had for its head Peter the Hermit himself, and a Burgundian knight called Walter have not. The second had a German priest named Gottschalk, and the third account Emiko of Leningen, potent in the neighborhood of Mayans. It is wrong to call them heads, for they were really nothing of the kind. Their authority was rejected at one time as tyrannical, at another as useless. The grasshoppers was the saying amongst them in the words of Solomon's proverbs, have no king, and yet they go in companies. In crossing Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the provinces of the Greek Empire, these companies urged on by their brutal passions or by their necessities and material wants, abandoned themselves to such irregularities that, as they went, princes and peoples, instead of welcoming them as Christians, came to treat them as enemies, of whom it was necessary to get rid at any price. Peter the Hermit and Gottschalk made honorable and sincere efforts to check the excesses of their following, which were a source of so much danger. But Count Emiko, on the contrary, says William of Tyre, himself took part in the plunder and incited his comrades to crime. Thus, at one time taking the offensive, at another compelled to defend themselves against the attacks of the justly irritated inhabitants, these three immense companies of pilgrims, these disorderly volunteers, with great difficulty arrived after enormous losses at the gates of Constantinople. Either through fear or through pity, the Greek emperor Alexus, or Alexius, Comnenus, permitted them to pitch their camp there, but before long, plenty, idleness, and the sight of the riches of Constantinople brought once more into the camp, license, and discipline, and a thirst after brigandage. While awaiting the war against the Muselman, the pilgrims pillaged the houses, the palaces, and even the churches in the outskirts of Byzantium. To deliver his capital from these destructive guests, Alexus furnished them with vessels and got them shipped off across the Bosporus. Whilst the crusade was commencing under these sad auspices, chieftains of more sense and better obeyed were preparing to give it another character and superior fortunes. Two great and real armies were forming in the north, the center, and the south of France, and a third in Italy, amongst the Norman knights who had founded there the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. Just before their countrymen, William the Bastard conquered England. The first of these armies had for its chief, Gadfé du Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine, whom all his contemporaries have described as the model of a gallant and pious knight. He was the son of Eustace II, Count of Boulogne, and the luster of nobility, says Raoul of Combe, chronicler of his times, was enhanced in his case by the splendor of the most exalted virtues, as well in affairs of the world as of heaven. As to the latter, he distinguished himself by his generosity toward the poor, and his pity for those who had committed faults. Furthermore, his humility, his extreme gentleness, his moderation, his justice, and his chastity were great. He shone as a light amongst the monks, even more than as a duke amongst the knights. And nevertheless, he could also do the things which are of this world, fight, marshal the ranks, and extend by arms the domains of the church. In his boyhood, he learned to be first, or one of the first, to strike the foe. In youth, he made it his habitual practice, and in advancing age, he forgot it never. He was so perfectly the son of the war-like Count Eustace, and of his mother, Ida de Bouillon, a woman full of piety and versed in literature, that at sight of him, even a rival would have been forced to say of him, for zeal in war behold his father, for serving God behold his mother. The second army, consisting chiefly of crusaders from southern France, marched under the orders of Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse, the oldest chieftain of the crusade, who still, however, united the ardor of youth with the experience of ripe age and the stubbornness of the greybeard. At the side of the seed he had fought, and more than once beaten the moors in Spain. He took with him to the east his third wife, Elvira, daughter of Alfonso VI, king of Castile, as well as a very young child he had by her, and he had made a vow, which he fulfilled, that he would return no more to his country, and would fight the infindels to the end of his days, in expiation of his sins. He was discreet though haughty, and not only the richest, but the most economical of the crusader chiefs. Accordingly says Raoul of Combe, when all the rest had spent their money, the riches of Count Raymond made him still more distinguished. The people of Provence formed his following, did not lavish their resources, but studied economy even more than glory. And his army, Eds-Guiber of Nogent, showed no inferiority to any other, saved so far as it is possible to repurchase the inhabitants of Vence, touching their excessive locacity. Bohemond, Prince of Tarento, commanded the Third Army, composed principally of Italians and warriors of various origins, come to Italy to share in the exploits and fortunes of his father the celebré de Robert Giscard, founder of the Norman Kingdom of Naples, who was at one time the foe, and at another the defender of Pope Gregory VII, and who died in the island of Ceflonia, just as he was preparing to attempt the conquest of Constantinople. Bohemond had neither less ambition nor less courage and ability than his father. His appearance, says Anna Comnenna, impressed the eye as much as his reputation astounded the mind. His height surpassed that of all his comrades, his blue eyes gleamed readily with pride and anger. When he spoke he would have said he had made eloquence his study, and when he showed himself an armour, you might have believed he had never done ought but handle lance and sword. Brought up in the school of Norman heroes, he concealed calculations of policy beneath the exterior of force, and although he was of a haughty disposition, he knew how to be blind to a wrong when there was nothing to be gained by avenging it. He had learned from his father to regard as foes, all whose dominions and riches he coveted, and he was not restrained by fear of God or by man's opinions or by his own oaths. It was not the deliverance of the tomb of Christ which fired his zeal or decided him upon taking up the cross, but as he had vowed eternal enmity to the Greek emperors, he smiled at the idea of traversing their empire at the head of an army, and full of confidence in his fortunes, he hoped to make for himself a kingdom before arriving at Jerusalem. Bohemond had as friend and faithful comrade his cousin tankered Otaville, great grandson through his mother Emma, of Robert Giscard, and according to all his contemporaries, the type of a perfect Christian knight, neither more nor less. From his boyhood, ses roiles of camp, his servitor before becoming his biographer, he surpassed the young by his skill in the management of arms, and the old by the strictness of his morals. He disdained to speak ill of whoever it might be, even when ill had been spoken of himself. About himself he would say not, but he had an insatiable desire to give cause for talking thereof. Glory was the only passion that moved that young soul, yet was it disquieted within him, and he suffered great anxiety from thinking that his nightly combats seemed contrary to the precepts of the Lord. The Lord bids us give our coat and our cloak to him who would take them from us, whereas the knight's part is to strip all that remains from him whom he hath already taken his coat and his cloak. These contradictory principles be numbed sometimes the courage of this man so full of propriety, but when the declaration of Pope Urban had assured remission of all their sins to all Christians who should go and fight the Gentiles, then tankered awoke in some sort from his dream, and this new opportunity fired him with a zeal which cannot be expressed. He therefore made preparations for his departure, but accustomed from his infancy to give to others before thinking of himself. He entered upon no great outlay, but contented himself with collecting insufficient quantity, nightly arms, horses, mules, and provisions necessary for his company. With these four chieftains who have remained illustrious in history, that grave wherein small reputations are extinguished, were associated with the deliverance of the Holy Land, a thong of feudal lords, some powerful as well as valiant, others valiant but simple knights. Hugh, Count of Vermoudois, brother of Philip I, King of France. Robert of Normandy, called short-hose, son of William the Conqueror. Robert, Count of Flanders. Stephen, Count of Blois. Rimbaud, Count of Orange. Baldwin, Count of Inaud. Raul of Beaujancy. Gerard of Roussillon, and many others whose names contemporary chroniclers and learned moderns have gathered together. Not one of the reigning sovereigns of Europe, kings or emperors of France, England, Spain, or Germany, took part in the first crusade. It was the feudal nation, great and small, castle owners and populace who rose in mass for the deliverance of Jerusalem and the honor of Christendom. These three great armies of crusaders got on the march from August to October 1096, wending their way, Godfrey de Bouillon by Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria, Boimond by the south of Italy and the Mediterranean, and Count Raymond of Toulouse by northern Italy, Friuli and Dalmatia. They arrived one after the other in the Empire of the East and at the gates of Constantinople. Godfrey de Bouillon was the first to appear there, and the Emperor Alexis Comnenus learned with dismay that other armies of crusaders would soon follow, that which was already so large. It was not long before Boimond and Raymond appeared. Alexis behaved toward these formidable allies with a mixture of pusillanimity and haughtiness, promises and lies, caresses and hostility, which irritated without intimidating them, and rendered it impossible for them to feel any confidence or conceive any esteem. At one time he was thanking them profusely for the support they were bringing him against the Infandels. At another he was sending troops to harass them on their road, and when they reached Constantinople he demanded that they should swear fealty and obedience to him, as if they were his own subjects. One day he was refusing them provisions and attempting to subdue them by famine, and the next he was lavishing feast and present upon them. The crusaders on their side, when provisions fell short, spread themselves over the country and plundered it without scruple, and when they encountered hostile troops of Greeks charged them without warning. When the Emperor demanded of them fealty and homage, the Count of Toulouse answered that he had not come to the east in search of a master. Godfrey de Bouillon, after resisting every haughty pretension, being as just as he was dignified, acknowledged that the crusaders ought to restore to the Emperor the towns which had belonged to the Empire, and an arrangement to that effect was concluded between them. Bohemond had a proposal submitted to Godfrey to join him in attacking the Greek Empire and taking possession at once of Byzantium, but Godfrey rejected the proposal with the reminder that he had come only to fight the infidels. The Emperor, fully informed of the greediness as well as ambition of Bohemond, introduced him one day into a room full of treasures. Here, said Bohemond, is wherewith to conquer kingdoms. Alexis had the treasures removed to Bohemond's, who at first refused and ended by accepting them. It is even said that he asked the Emperor for the title of Grand Domestic or General of the Empire of the East. Alexis, who had held that dignity and who knew that it was the way to the throne, gave the Norman Chieftain a present refusal with a promise of it on account of future services to be rendered by him to the Empire and the Emperor. The Chiefs of the Crusade were not alone in treating with disdain this haughty, wily, and feeble sovereign. During a ceremony at which some French princes were doing homage to the Emperor, a Count Robert of Paris went and sat down free and easily beside him. When Baldwin, Count of Ainot, took the intruder by the arm saying, when you are in a country you must respect its masters and its customs, verily answered Robert, I hold it shocking that this jack-a-napes should be seated while so many noble captains are standing yonder. When the ceremony was over, the Emperor, who had no doubt heard the words, wished to have an explanation, so he detained Robert, and asked him who and whence he was. I am a Frenchman, quote Robert, and of noble birth. In my country there is, hard by a church, a spot repaired to by such as burn to prove their valor. I have been there often without anyone's daring to present himself before me. The Emperor did not care to take up this sort of challenge and contented himself with replying to the warrior. If you there waited for foes without finding any, you are now about to have what will satisfy you. I have, however, a piece of advice to give you. Don't put yourself at the head or the tail of the army, keep in the middle. I have learned how to fight with Turks, and that is the best place you can choose. The Crusaders and the Greeks were mutually contemptuous. The former with a ruffianly pride, the latter with an ironical and timid refinement. This posture on either side of inactivity, ill will, and irritation could not last long. On the approach of the spring of 1097, the Crusader chiefs and their troops, first Godfrey de Bouillon, then Bohemond and Tancred, and afterwards Count Raymond of Toulouse, passed the Bosporus, being conveyed across either in their own vessels or those of the Emperor Alexis, who encouraged them against the Infidels, and at the same time had the Infidels supplied with information most damaging to the Crusaders. Having affected a junction in Bithnia, the Christian chiefs resolved to go and lay siege to Nicaea, the first place of importance and possession of the Turks. Whilst marching towards the place, they saw coming to meet them, with every appearance of the most woeful destitution, Peter the Hermit, followed by a small band of pilgrims escaped from the disasters of their expedition, who had passed the winter, as he had, in Bithnia waiting for more fortunate Crusaders. Peter, affectionately welcomed by the chiefs of the army, recounted to them in detail, says William of Tyre, how the people who had preceded them under his guidance had shown themselves destitute of intelligence, improvident and unmanageable at the same time, and so it was far more by their own fault than by the deed of any other that they had succumbed to the weight of their calamities. Peter, having thus relieved his heart and recovered his hopes, joined the powerful army of Crusaders who had come at last, and on the 15th of May 1097, the siege of Nicaea began. The town was in the hands of a Turkish sultan, Kilidge Arslan, whose father Solomon, 20 years before, had invaded Bithnia and fixed his abode at Nicaea. He, being informed of the approach of the Crusaders, had issued forth to go and assemble all his forces, but he had left behind his wife, his children, and his treasures, and he had sent messengers to the inhabitants, saying, Be of good courage, and fear not the barbarous people who make show of besieging our city. Tomorrow, before the seventh hour of the day, ye shall be delivered from your enemies. And he did arrive on the 16th of May, says the Armenian historian Mathias of Edessa, at the head of 600,000 horsemen. The historians of the Crusaders are infinitely more moderate as to the number of their foes. They assigned to Kilidge Arslan only 50 or 60,000 men, and their testimony is far more trustworthy, being that of the victors. In any case, the Christians and the Turks fought valiantly for two days under the walls of Nicaea, and Godfrey de Bouillon did justice to his fame for valor and skill by laying low a Turk, remarkable amongst all, says William of Tyre, for his size and strength, whose arrows caused much havoc in the ranks of our men. Kilidge Arslan, being beaten, withdrew to collect fresh troops, and after six weeks siege, the Crusaders believed themselves on the point of entering Nicaea as masters. When on the 26th of June, they saw floating on the ramparts the standard of the Emperor Alexis. Their surprise was the greater, in that they had just written to the Emperor to say that the city was on the point of surrendering, and they added, we earnestly invite you to lose no time in sending some of your princes with sufficient retinue, that they may receive and keep in honor of your name the city which will deliver itself up to us. As for us, after having put it in the hands of your highness, we will not show any delay in pursuing with God's help the execution of our projects. Alexis had anticipated this loyal message. Being in constant secret communication with the former subjects of the Greek Empire, and often even with their new masters the Turks, his agents in Nicaea had induced the inhabitants to surrender to him, and not to the Latins, who would treat them as vanquished. The irritation amongst the Crusaders was extreme. They had promised themselves, if not the plunder of Nicaea, at any rate great advantages from their victory, and it was said in the camp that the convention concluded with the Emperor contained an article purporting that, if with God's help there were taken any of the towns which had belonged a foretime to the Greek Empire all along the line of March, up to the Syria. The town should be restored to the Emperor, together with all the adjacent territory, and that the booty, the spoils, and all objects whatsoever found therein should be given up without discussion to the Crusader in recompense for their trouble and indemnification for the expenses. The wrath waxed still fiercer when it was known that the Crusaders would not be permitted to enter more than ten at a time the town they had just taken, and that the Emperor Alexis had set at liberty the wife of Killa Jarslin, together with her two sons and all the Turks led prisoners of war to Constantinople. The chiefs of the Crusaders were themselves indignant and distrustful, but they resolved with one accord, says William of Tyre, to hide their resentment, and they applied all their efforts to calming their people while encouraging them to push on without delay to the end of the glorious enterprise.