CHAP. as yet existed there but in embryo; clergy and aristocracy were one. The burgesses in the communes inspired but little jealousy or fear. Throughout the eleventh century the French were chiefly occupied and moved by schemes of heroic adventure. At its commencement the Normans conquered South Italy; England was subdued in 1066. Numberless were the expeditions to Spain. Whilst armed ambition thus set the example of glory and of conquest, pilgrims of all classes hied to Jerusalem, and suffered there every ignominy, cruelty, and exaction at the hands of the Turks, who had poured down from the Caspian, and superseded the milder and more civilised Arabs in the spiritual and temporal lordship of the great continent. Amongst the pilgrims the clergy were not the least numerous; and these, as well as laymen, suffered countless injuries. This was at the time when the western clergy pretended to rule the world, and when the pride of the warrior was such as scarcely to brook a rival. The indignities inflicted by the Mohammedans on the Christians, as well as on the sacred places of Judea, were rankling for well nigh a century on the European mind; when two men appeared to unite this universal resentment into one great impulse and act. The chief agent in this great work was Peter the Hermit. Others, indeed, had expressed the wish or broached the idea. Gerbert had pointed out the necessity of Europe resisting the armed infidelity of the Mussulman. Gregory the Seventh conceived the idea of sending the Latins to save the Greek Church and Empire from the Turks, and take the opportunity of subjecting them both to Rome. But schemes conceived in mere policy seldom lay hold on the popular mind. A monk in his simplicity lit up the flame, which papal craft could but fan or appropriate. Peter, a monk from the deserts of Armenia, visited the Holy Land, and had the care to note all the acts of tyranny practised by the Turks. He consulted the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who pointed out that the Holy City could have no hope of relief from the Greek Emperor, but that the Latin Church and Western princes could alone save it. Peter the Hermit returned from Syria full of this idea, which he hastened to communicate to the Pope. Urban was at this time in South Italy, beaten down by the Emperor and the lay party, scarcely able to enter Rome, and confined in his resources to the oblations of a few monasteries. Urban was a Franciscan, who knew his countrymen, and who seized upon Peter the Hermit's idea of crusade, not only as a holy aim in itself, but as one likely to rally round the Pope the power and the chivalry of Western Christendom. He preached the project, or rather he sent forth the eloquent and enthusiastic Peter to preach it; and he summoned a great assembly of clergy and laity to meet in the plains of Piacenza. They did so; but the Pope, instead of coming to a compromise with the Emperor, and impelling Germany and Italy as well as France to the crusade, occupied the council with infamous anecdotes against the Emperor, and, in fact, with the details of his own quarrel. This cooled the ardour of the Italians, and disgusted rather than reconciled them with an expedition of which Urban was the great promoter. The Pope, therefore, turned his views towards France; sent Peter the Hermit before him, and followed leisurely himself, to convoke another great assembly of laity and clergy. Peter the Hermit is depicted by William of Tyre as a man of small stature and even miserable appearance, but with a penetrating eye, an easy and persuasive eloquence. Preceding Urban, he visited the capitals of the different princes, relating what he had seen, and communicating the enthusiasm that he felt. Nor did he confine his eloquence to courts; he summoned popular meetings, and harangued them in order to win the adhesion of the people, as well as of the knightly classes. CHAP. III. CHAP. III. In November, 1095, Urban opened the great assembly of Clermont. The Papal address is not a little singular. The Christian Pontiff commenced by taking a Jewish view of the holy city. Judea was the Lord's heritage, and Jerusalem his especial crown of glory. And if he sometimes repudiated it, and turned away from it, this was only with a promise of future redemption. The Saracens were in possession of it, the sons of Ishmael, who had no part in the inheritance, and should be driven from it. With eloquence more true, Urban told the assembled warriors to turn against the enemies of Christ and of the faith, those arms that had been imbrued in the blood of brethren. Those guilty of robbery, murder, rapine, and other profane crimes could have no share in the kingdom of heaven, unless they redeemed such sins by a crusade like the present. The address of Pope Urban was responded to by a general exclamation of "God wills it." The Pope then ordained that every one who undertook to march against the infidels, should have a cloth cross of bright colour sewn upon his garments. This at once assimilated the crusaders to those who had taken up the cross in the time of the Saviour, and rendered powerful and apt the injunction, "Whosoever does not take up the cross and follow me, the same is unworthy of me." The chief personages who assumed the cross in consequence of the assembly of Clermont, are enumerated by William of Tyre, as Hugh, brother of King Philip of France, the Count of Vernandois, the two Roberts, Counts of Flanders and of Normandy, Stephen Count of Chartres, and Raymond of St. Gilles, Lord of Provence and Toulouse; also the three famous brothers, Godfrey of Bouillon, Eustace and Baldwin of Boulogne. The Bishop of Puy, as the most zealous crusading prelate, was appointed as Papal legate to join the expedition. The name of King Philip does not appear in this list. He was indeed excommunicated on account of his marriage by Urban, at this very council of Clermont; so little did the Pope deem the King of France's countenance of importance to the expedition. In fact, the Pontiff seemed to desire that none but secondary potentates should take part in it, hoping, no doubt, to secure to the Holy See the suzerainty of all conquests in Palestine. William of Nangis, however, mentions that in the month of February in the following year, Hugh the Great was present at a council of French crusaders, held in Paris, in the presence of King Philip. The resolutions taken at that council were not wise. For Hugh, with his French followers, took the road through South Italy, where many were carried off by malady, and the prince, embarking at Bari for Durazzo, was taken by order of the Greek emperor, and carried a captive to Constantinople. The year following the preaching of the crusade was one of great scarcity, so that the people who were not in the dependence or employ of some feudal lord were in complete destitution. These waifs of rustic society mustered to the number of 40,000, and set off under Peter the Hermit, as a leader, across Hungary to Asia; a multitude, but almost as unprovided and undisciplined, having but six knights with them, took the same road previously under Gaultier Sans Avoir. Both of these hordes came to fierce quarrels and combats with the Hungarians and Bulgarians, and reached Constantinople diminished in numbers. Although allowing them to pass some time without the walls of Constantinople, the Emperor Alexis transported them over to Ghemlik, on the Asiatic coast, at the head of the gulf of Mondania. He enjoined them not to provoke the Mussulmans; an advice they of course neglected, and the consequence was the onslaught and destruction of the vanguard of the crusaders by the Turks. CHAP. III. CHAP. III. Similar bands of German crusaders were not even so fortunate; some of these crossed the Danube, and perished in Hungary; whilst others, checked at the entrance of that country, returned in affright and defeat to towns which they themselves had devastated. The crusading expedition which issued from France Proper partook of the disorganised state of that country without a chief, without adhesion, or rational purposes. The rulers of large principalities on the frontier evinced much more skill and judgment in forming, maintaining, and conducting their forces. Thus the Provençals, under their Count Raymond, continued to be well provided, while those of other lands were in destitution. But the chiefs whose armies showed most efficacy, were Godfrey of Bouillon, who mustered the forces of the north in Lorraine, and Boemond, son of Robert Guiscard the founder of the kingdom of Naples. When this prince, who was engaged in the siege of Amalfi, heard of the march of so many warriors of his tongue and original country, engaged in a sacred cause, and each abandoning the distinctive cry of his house to adopt that of the council of Clermont, "God wills it," he was struck with the religious enthusiasm of the day, and assumed the cross. His preparations, however, had yet to be made, and he delayed the departure of the French crusaders until these were completed. Meanwhile the army of Lorraine, under Godfrey, which had set forth in August, traversed Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria, and arrived at the commencement of winter in the plains of Thrace. There Godfrey learned the captivity of Hugh and other French nobles at Constantinople. His first care was to demand their liberation, which, after much parley and dispute with the Greek Emperor, he obtained, when encamped under the walls of Constantinople and about to celebrate the Christmas of 1096. The Emperor Alexis was dis |