The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

E >> Edward Gibbon >> The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

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[Footnote 27: At a quarter, or even half a rial a lash, Sancho
Panza was a cheaper, and possibly not a more dishonest, workman.
I remember in Pere Labat (Voyages en Italie, tom. vii. p. 16 -
29) a very lively picture of the dexterity of one of these
artists.]

[Footnote 28: Quicunque pro sola devotione, non pro honoris vel
pecuniae adoptione, ad liberandam ecclesiam Dei Jerusalem
profectus fuerit, iter illud pro omni poenitentia reputetur.
Canon. Concil. Claromont. ii. p. 829. Guibert styles it novum
salutis genus, (p. 471,) and is almost philosophical on the
subject.

Note: See note, page 546. - M.]

[Footnote 29: Such at least was the belief of the crusaders, and
such is the uniform style of the historians, (Esprit des
Croisades, tom. iii. p. 477;) but the prayer for the repose of
their souls is inconsistent in orthodox theology with the merits
of martyrdom.]

Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.

Part II.

Of the chiefs and soldiers who marched to the holy sepulchre,
I will dare to affirm, that all were prompted by the spirit of
enthusiasm; the belief of merit, the hope of reward, and the
assurance of divine aid. But I am equally persuaded, that in
many it was not the sole, that in some it was not the leading,
principle of action. The use and abuse of religion are feeble to
stem, they are strong and irresistible to impel, the stream of
national manners. Against the private wars of the Barbarians,
their bloody tournaments, licentious love, and judicial duels,
the popes and synods might ineffectually thunder. It is a more
easy task to provoke the metaphysical disputes of the Greeks, to
drive into the cloister the victims of anarchy or despotism, to
sanctify the patience of slaves and cowards, or to assume the
merit of the humanity and benevolence of modern Christians. War
and exercise were the reigning passions of the Franks or Latins;
they were enjoined, as a penance, to gratify those passions, to
visit distant lands, and to draw their swords against the nation
of the East. Their victory, or even their attempt, would
immortalize the names of the intrepid heroes of the cross; and
the purest piety could not be insensible to the most splendid
prospect of military glory. In the petty quarrels of Europe,
they shed the blood of their friends and countrymen, for the
acquisition perhaps of a castle or a village. They could march
with alacrity against the distant and hostile nations who were
devoted to their arms; their fancy already grasped the golden
sceptres of Asia; and the conquest of Apulia and Sicily by the
Normans might exalt to royalty the hopes of the most private
adventurer. Christendom, in her rudest state, must have yielded
to the climate and cultivation of the Mahometan countries; and
their natural and artificial wealth had been magnified by the
tales of pilgrims, and the gifts of an imperfect commerce. The
vulgar, both the great and small, were taught to believe every
wonder, of lands flowing with milk and honey, of mines and
treasures, of gold and diamonds, of palaces of marble and jasper,
and of odoriferous groves of cinnamon and frankincense. In this
earthly paradise, each warrior depended on his sword to carve a
plenteous and honorable establishment, which he measured only by
the extent of his wishes. ^30 Their vassals and soldiers trusted
their fortunes to God and their master: the spoils of a Turkish
emir might enrich the meanest follower of the camp; and the
flavor of the wines, the beauty of the Grecian women, ^31 were
temptations more adapted to the nature, than to the profession,
of the champions of the cross. The love of freedom was a
powerful incitement to the multitudes who were oppressed by
feudal or ecclesiastical tyranny. Under this holy sign, the
peasants and burghers, who were attached to the servitude of the
glebe, might escape from a haughty lord, and transplant
themselves and their families to a land of liberty. The monk
might release himself from the discipline of his convent: the
debtor might suspend the accumulation of usury, and the pursuit
of his creditors; and outlaws and malefactors of every cast might
continue to brave the laws and elude the punishment of their
crimes. ^32

[Footnote 30: The same hopes were displayed in the letters of the
adventurers ad animandos qui in Francia residerant. Hugh de
Reiteste could boast, that his share amounted to one abbey and
ten castles, of the yearly value of 1500 marks, and that he
should acquire a hundred castles by the conquest of Aleppo,
(Guibert, p. 554, 555.)]

[Footnote 31: In his genuine or fictitious letter to the count of
Flanders, Alexius mingles with the danger of the church, and the
relics of saints, the auri et argenti amor, and pulcherrimarum
foeminarum voluptas, p. 476;) as if, says the indignant Guibert,
the Greek women were handsomer than those of France.]

[Footnote 32: See the privileges of the Crucesignati, freedom
from debt, usury injury, secular justice, &c. The pope was their
perpetual guardian (Ducange, tom. ii. p. 651, 652.)]

These motives were potent and numerous: when we have singly
computed their weight on the mind of each individual, we must add
the infinite series, the multiplying powers, of example and
fashion. The first proselytes became the warmest and most
effectual missionaries of the cross: among their friends and
countrymen they preached the duty, the merit, and the recompense,
of their holy vow; and the most reluctant hearers were insensibly
drawn within the whirlpool of persuasion and authority. The
martial youths were fired by the reproach or suspicion of
cowardice; the opportunity of visiting with an army the sepulchre
of Christ was embraced by the old and infirm, by women and
children, who consulted rather their zeal than their strength;
and those who in the evening had derided the folly of their
companions, were the most eager, the ensuing day, to tread in
their footsteps. The ignorance, which magnified the hopes,
diminished the perils, of the enterprise. Since the Turkish
conquest, the paths of pilgrimage were obliterated; the chiefs
themselves had an imperfect notion of the length of the way and
the state of their enemies; and such was the stupidity of the
people, that, at the sight of the first city or castle beyond the
limits of their knowledge, they were ready to ask whether that
was not the Jerusalem, the term and object of their labors. Yet
the more prudent of the crusaders, who were not sure that they
should be fed from heaven with a shower of quails or manna,
provided themselves with those precious metals, which, in every
country, are the representatives of every commodity. To defray,
according to their rank, the expenses of the road, princes
alienated their provinces, nobles their lands and castles,
peasants their cattle and the instruments of husbandry. The
value of property was depreciated by the eager competition of
multitudes; while the price of arms and horses was raised to an
exorbitant height by the wants and impatience of the buyers. ^33
Those who remained at home, with sense and money, were enriched
by the epidemical disease: the sovereigns acquired at a cheap
rate the domains of their vassals; and the ecclesiastical
purchasers completed the payment by the assurance of their
prayers. The cross, which was commonly sewed on the garment, in
cloth or silk, was inscribed by some zealots on their skin: a hot
iron, or indelible liquor, was applied to perpetuate the mark;
and a crafty monk, who showed the miraculous impression on his
breast was repaid with the popular veneration and the richest
benefices of Palestine. ^34

[Footnote 33: Guibert (p. 481) paints in lively colors this
general emotion. He was one of the few contemporaries who had
genius enough to feel the astonishing scenes that were passing
before their eyes. Erat itaque videre miraculum, caro omnes
emere, atque vili vendere, &c.]

[Footnote 34: Some instances of these stigmata are given in the
Esprit des Croisades, (tom. iii. p. 169 &c.,) from authors whom I
have not seen]

The fifteenth of August had been fixed in the council of
Clermont for the departure of the pilgrims; but the day was
anticipated by the thoughtless and needy crowd of plebeians, and
I shall briefly despatch the calamities which they inflicted and
suffered, before I enter on the more serious and successful
enterprise of the chiefs. Early in the spring, from the confines
of France and Lorraine, above sixty thousand of the populace of
both sexes flocked round the first missionary of the crusade, and
pressed him with clamorous importunity to lead them to the holy
sepulchre. The hermit, assuming the character, without the
talents or authority, of a general, impelled or obeyed the
forward impulse of his votaries along the banks of the Rhine and
Danube. Their wants and numbers soon compelled them to separate,
and his lieutenant, Walter the Penniless, a valiant though needy
soldier, conducted a van guard of pilgrims, whose condition may
be determined from the proportion of eight horsemen to fifteen
thousand foot. The example and footsteps of Peter were closely
pursued by another fanatic, the monk Godescal, whose sermons had
swept away fifteen or twenty thousand peasants from the villages
of Germany. Their rear was again pressed by a herd of two
hundred thousand, the most stupid and savage refuse of the
people, who mingled with their devotion a brutal license of
rapine, prostitution, and drunkenness. Some counts and
gentlemen, at the head of three thousand horse, attended the
motions of the multitude to partake in the spoil; but their
genuine leaders (may we credit such folly?) were a goose and a
goat, who were carried in the front, and to whom these worthy
Christians ascribed an infusion of the divine spirit. ^35 Of
these, and of other bands of enthusiasts, the first and most easy
warfare was against the Jews, the murderers of the Son of God.
In the trading cities of the Moselle and the Rhine, their
colonies were numerous and rich; and they enjoyed, under the
protection of the emperor and the bishops, the free exercise of
their religion. ^36 At Verdun, Treves, Mentz, Spires, Worms, many
thousands of that unhappy people were pillaged and massacred: ^37
nor had they felt a more bloody stroke since the persecution of
Hadrian. A remnant was saved by the firmness of their bishops,
who accepted a feigned and transient conversion; but the more
obstinate Jews opposed their fanaticism to the fanaticism of the
Christians, barricadoed their houses, and precipitating
themselves, their families, and their wealth, into the rivers or
the flames, disappointed the malice, or at least the avarice, of
their implacable foes.

[Footnote 35: Fuit et aliud scelus detestabile in hac
congregatione pedestris populi stulti et vesanae levitatis,
anserem quendam divino spiritu asserebant afflatum, et capellam
non minus eodem repletam, et has sibi duces secundae viae
fecerant, &c., (Albert. Aquensis, l. i. c. 31, p. 196.) Had these
peasants founded an empire, they might have introduced, as in
Egypt, the worship of animals, which their philosophic descend
ants would have glossed over with some specious and subtile
allegory.

Note: A singular "allegoric" explanation of this strange
fact has recently been broached: it is connected with the charge
of idolatry and Eastern heretical opinions subsequently made
against the Templars. "We have no doubt that they were Manichee
or Gnostic standards." (The author says the animals themselves
were carried before the army. - M.) "The goose, in Egyptian
symbols, as every Egyptian scholar knows, meant 'divine Son,' or
'Son of God.' The goat meant Typhon, or Devil. Thus we have the
Manichee opposing principles of good and evil, as standards, at
the head of the ignorant mob of crusading invaders. Can any one
doubt that a large portion of this host must have been infected
with the Manichee or Gnostic idolatry?" Account of the Temple
Church by R. W. Billings, p. 5 London. 1838. This is, at all
events, a curious coincidence, especially considered in
connection with the extensive dissemination of the Paulician
opinions among the common people of Europe. At any rate, in so
inexplicable a matter, we are inclined to catch at any
explanation, however wild or subtile. - M.]

[Footnote 36: Benjamin of Tudela describes the state of his
Jewish brethren from Cologne along the Rhine: they were rich,
generous, learned, hospitable, and lived in the eager hope of the
Messiah, (Voyage, tom. i. p. 243 - 245, par Baratier.) In seventy
years (he wrote about A.D. 1170) they had recovered from these
massacres.]

[Footnote 37: These massacres and depredations on the Jews, which
were renewed at each crusade, are coolly related. It is true,
that St. Bernard (epist. 363, tom. i. p. 329) admonishes the
Oriental Franks, non sunt persequendi Judaei, non sunt
trucidandi. The contrary doctrine had been preached by a rival
monk.

Note: This is an unjust sarcasm against St. Bernard. He
stood above all rivalry of this kind See note 31, c. l x. - M]

Between the frontiers of Austria and the seat of the Byzan
tine monarchy, the crusaders were compelled to traverse as
interval of six hundred miles; the wild and desolate countries of
Hungary ^38 and Bulgaria. The soil is fruitful, and intersected
with rivers; but it was then covered with morasses and forests,
which spread to a boundless extent, whenever man has ceased to
exercise his dominion over the earth. Both nations had imbibed
the rudiments of Christianity; the Hungarians were ruled by their
native princes; the Bulgarians by a lieutenant of the Greek
emperor; but, on the slightest provocation, their ferocious
nature was rekindled, and ample provocation was afforded by the
disorders of the first pilgrims Agriculture must have been
unskilful and languid among a people, whose cities were built of
reeds and timber, which were deserted in the summer season for
the tents of hunters and shepherds. A scanty supply of
provisions was rudely demanded, forcibly seized, and greedily
consumed; and on the first quarrel, the crusaders gave a loose to
indignation and revenge. But their ignorance of the country, of
war, and of discipline, exposed them to every snare. The Greek
praefect of Bulgaria commanded a regular force; ^* at the trumpet
of the Hungarian king, the eighth or the tenth of his martial
subjects bent their bows and mounted on horseback; their policy
was insidious, and their retaliation on these pious robbers was
unrelenting and bloody. ^39 About a third of the naked fugitives
(and the hermit Peter was of the number) escaped to the Thracian
mountains; and the emperor, who respected the pilgrimage and
succor of the Latins, conducted them by secure and easy journeys
to Constantinople, and advised them to await the arrival of their
brethren. For a while they remembered their faults and losses;
but no sooner were they revived by the hospitable entertainment,
than their venom was again inflamed; they stung their benefactor,
and neither gardens, nor palaces, nor churches, were safe from
their depredations. For his own safety, Alexius allured them to
pass over to the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus; but their blind
impetuosity soon urged them to desert the station which he had
assigned, and to rush headlong against the Turks, who occupied
the road to Jerusalem. The hermit, conscious of his shame, had
withdrawn from the camp to Constantinople; and his lieutenant,
Walter the Penniless, who was worthy of a better command,
attempted without success to introduce some order and prudence
among the herd of savages. They separated in quest of prey, and
themselves fell an easy prey to the arts of the sultan. By a
rumor that their foremost companions were rioting in the spoils
of his capital, Soliman ^* tempted the main body to descend into
the plain of Nice: they were overwhelmed by the Turkish arrows;
and a pyramid of bones ^40 informed their companions of the place
of their defeat. Of the first crusaders, three hundred thousand
had already perished, before a single city was rescued from the
infidels, before their graver and more noble brethren had
completed the preparations of their enterprise. ^41

[Footnote 38: See the contemporary description of Hungary in Otho
of Frisin gen, l. ii. c. 31, in Muratori, Script. Rerum
Italicarum, tom. vi. p. 665 666.]

[Footnote *: The narrative of the first march is very incorrect.
The first party moved under Walter de Pexego and Walter the
Penniless: they passed safe through Hungary, the kingdom of
Kalmeny, and were attacked in Bulgaria. Peter followed with
40,000 men; passed through Hungary; but seeing the clothes of
sixteen crusaders, who had been empaled on the walls of Semlin.
he attacked and stormed the city. He then marched to Nissa,
where, at first, he was hospitably received: but an accidental
quar rel taking place, he suffered a great defeat. Wilken, vol.
i. p. 84 - 86 - M.]

[Footnote 39: The old Hungarians, without excepting Turotzius,
are ill informed of the first crusade, which they involve in a
single passage. Katona, like ourselves, can only quote the
writers of France; but he compares with local science the ancient
and modern geography. Ante portam Cyperon, is Sopron or Poson;
Mallevilla, Zemlin; Fluvius Maroe, Savus; Lintax, Leith;
Mesebroch, or Merseburg, Ouar, or Moson; Tollenburg, Pragg, (de
Regibus Hungariae, tom. iii. p. 19 - 53.)]

[Footnote *: Soliman had been killed in 1085, in a battle against
Toutoneh, brother of Malek Schah, between Appelo and Antioch. It
was not Soliman, therefore, but his son David, surnamed Kilidje
Arslan, the "Sword of the Lion," who reigned in Nice. Almost all
the occidental authors have fallen into this mistake, which was
detected by M. Michaud, Hist. des Crois. 4th edit. and Extraits
des Aut. Arab. rel. aux Croisades, par M. Reinaud Paris, 1829, p.
3. His kingdom extended from the Orontes to the Euphra tes, and
as far as the Bosphorus. Kilidje Arslan must uniformly be
substituted for Soliman. Brosset note on Le Beau, tom. xv. p.
311. - M.]

[Footnote 40: Anna Comnena (Alexias, l. x. p. 287) describes this
as a mountain. In the siege of Nice, such were used by the
Franks themselves as the materials of a wall.]

[Footnote 41: See table on following page.]

"To save time and space, I shall represent, in a short table, the
particular references to the great events of the first crusade."

[See Table 1.: Events Of The First Crusade]

None of the great sovereigns of Europe embarked their
persons in the first crusade. The emperor Henry the Fourth was
not disposed to obey the summons of the pope: Philip the First of
France was occupied by his pleasures; William Rufus of England by
a recent conquest; the kin`gs of Spain were engaged in a domestic
war against the Moors; and the northern monarchs of Scotland,
Denmark, ^42 Sweden, and Poland, were yet strangers to the
passions and interests of the South. The religious ardor was
more strongly felt by the princes of the second order, who held
an important place in the feudal system. Their situation will
naturally cast under four distinct heads the review of their
names and characters; but I may escape some needless repetition,
by observing at once, that courage and the exercise of arms are
the common attribute of these Christian adventurers. I. The
first rank both in war and council is justly due to Godfrey of
Bouillon; and happy would it have been for the crusaders, if they
had trusted themselves to the sole conduct of that accomplished
hero, a worthy representative of Charlemagne, from whom he was
descended in the female line. His father was of the noble race
of the counts of Boulogne: Brabant, the lower province of
Lorraine, ^43 was the inheritance of his mother; and by the
emperor's bounty he was himself invested with that ducal title,
which has been improperly transferred to his lordship of Bouillon
in the Ardennes. ^44 In the service of Henry the Fourth, he bore
the great standard of the empire, and pierced with his lance the
breast of Rodolph, the rebel king: Godfrey was the first who
ascended the walls of Rome; and his sickness, his vow, perhaps
his remorse for bearing arms against the pope, confirmed an early
resolution of visiting the holy sepulchre, not as a pilgrim, but
a deliverer. His valor was matured by prudence and moderation;
his piety, though blind, was sincere; and, in the tumult of a
camp, he practised the real and fictitious virtues of a convent.
Superior to the private factions of the chiefs, he reserved his
enmity for the enemies of Christ; and though he gained a kingdom
by the attempt, his pure and disinterested zeal was acknowledged
by his rivals. Godfrey of Bouillon ^45 was accompanied by his
two brothers, by Eustace the elder, who had succeeded to the
county of Boulogne, and by the younger, Baldwin, a character of
more ambiguous virtue. The duke of Lorraine, was alike
celebrated on either side of the Rhine: from his birth and
education, he was equally conversant with the French and Teutonic
languages: the barons of France, Germany, and Lorraine, assembled
their vassals; and the confederate force that marched under his
banner was composed of fourscore thousand foot and about ten
thousand horse. II. In the parliament that was held at Paris, in
the king's presence, about two months after the council of
Clermont, Hugh, count of Vermandois, was the most conspicuous of
the princes who assumed the cross. But the appellation of the
Great was applied, not so much to his merit or possessions,
(though neither were contemptible,) as to the royal birth of the
brother of the king of France. ^46 Robert, duke of Normandy, was
the eldest son of William the Conqueror; but on his father's
death he was deprived of the kingdom of England, by his own
indolence and the activity of his brother Rufus. The worth of
Robert was degraded by an excessive levity and easiness of
temper: his cheerfulness seduced him to the indulgence of
pleasure; his profuse liberality impoverished the prince and
people; his indiscriminate clemency multiplied the number of
offenders; and the amiable qualities of a private man became the
essential defects of a sovereign. For the trifling sum of ten
thousand marks, he mortgaged Normandy during his absence to the
English usurper; ^47 but his engagement and behavior in the holy
war announced in Robert a reformation of manners, and restored
him in some degree to the public esteem. Another Robert was
count of Flanders, a royal province, which, in this century, gave
three queens to the thrones of France, England, and Denmark: he
was surnamed the Sword and Lance of the Christians; but in the
exploits of a soldier he sometimes forgot the duties of a
general. Stephen, count of Chartres, of Blois, and of Troyes,
was one of the richest princes of the age; and the number of his
castles has been compared to the three hundred and sixty-five
days of the year. His mind was improved by literature; and, in
the council of the chiefs, the eloquent Stephen ^48 was chosen to
discharge the office of their president. These four were the
principal leaders of the French, the Normans, and the pilgrims of
the British isles: but the list of the barons who were possessed
of three or four towns would exceed, says a contemporary, the
catalogue of the Trojan war. ^49 III. In the south of France,
the command was assumed by Adhemar bishop of Puy, the pope egate,
and by Raymond count of St. Giles and Thoulouse who added the
prouder titles of duke of Narbonne and marquis of Provence. The
former was a respectable prelate, alike qualified for this world
and the next. The latter was a veteran warrior, who had fought
against the Saracens of Spain, and who consecrated his declining
age, not only to the deliverance, but to the perpetual service,
of the holy sepulchre. His experience and riches gave him a
strong ascendant in the Christian camp, whose distress he was
often able, and sometimes willing, to relieve. But it was easier
for him to extort the praise of the Infidels, than to preserve
the love of his subjects and associates. His eminent qualities
were clouded by a temper haughty, envious, and obstinate; and,
though he resigned an ample patrimony for the cause of God, his
piety, in the public opinion, was not exempt from avarice and
ambition. ^50 A mercantile, rather than a martial, spirit
prevailed among his provincials, ^51 a common name, which
included the natives of Auvergne and Languedoc, ^52 the vassals
of the kingdom of Burgundy or Arles. From the adjacent frontier
of Spain he drew a band of hardy adventurers; as he marched
through Lombardy, a crowd of Italians flocked to his standard,
and his united force consisted of one hundred thousand horse and
foot. If Raymond was the first to enlist and the last to depart,
the delay may be excused by the greatness of his preparation and
the promise of an everlasting farewell. IV. The name of
Bohemond, the son of Robert Guiscard, was already famous by his
double victory over the Greek emperor; but his father's will had
reduced him to the principality of Tarentum, and the remembrance
of his Eastern trophies, till he was awakened by the rumor and
passage of the French pilgrims. It is in the person of this
Norman chief that we may seek for the coolest policy and
ambition, with a small allay of religious fanaticism. His
conduct may justify a belief that he had secretly directed the
design of the pope, which he affected to second with astonishment
and zeal: at the siege of Amalphi, his example and discourse
inflamed the passions of a confederate army; he instantly tore
his garment to supply crosses for the numerous candidates, and
prepared to visit Constantinople and Asia at the head of ten
thousand horse and twenty thousand foot. Several princes of the
Norman race accompanied this veteran general; and his cousin
Tancred ^53 was the partner, rather than the servant, of the war.