XLIV. transported to the camp by the vigour and dexterity CHAP. of Tancred; and the engines were framed by some Genoese artists, who had fortunately landed in the harbour of Jaffa. Two moveable turrets were constructed at the expense, and in the stations, of the duke of Lorraine and the count of Thoulouse, and rolled forwards with devout labour, not to the most accessible, but to the most neglected parts of the fortification. Raymond's tower was reduced to ashes by the fire of the besieged, but his colleague was more vigilant and successful: the enemies were driven by his archers from the rampart; the drawbridge was let down; and on a Friday, at three in the afternoon, the day and hour of the Passion, Godfrey of Bouillon stood victorious on the walls of Jerusalem. His ex ample was followed on every side by the emulation of valour; and about four hundred and sixty years after the conquest of Omar, the holy city was rescued from the Mahometan yoke. In the pillage of public and private wealth, the adventurers had agreed to respect the exclusive property of the first occupant; and the spoils of the great mosque, seventy lamps and massy vases of gold and silver, rewarded the diligence, and displayed the generosity, of Tancred. reign of A. D. 1099, A. D. 1100, Eight days after this memorable event, which pope Election and Urban did not live to hear, the Latin chiefs proceeded Godfrey of to the election of a king, to guard and govern their Bouillon, conquests in Palestine. Hugh the Great, and Ste- July 23 phen of Chartres, had retired with some loss of repu- July 18. tation, which they strove to regain by a second crusade and an honourable death. Baldwin was established at Edessa, and Bohemond at Antioch; and two Roberts, the duke of Normandy and the count of Flanders, preferred their fair inheritance in the West to a doubtful competition or a barren sceptre. The jealousy and ambition of Raymond were condemned by his own followers, and the free, the just, CHAP. the unanimous voice of the army, proclaimed GodXLIV. frey of Bouillon the first and most worthy of the champions of Christendom. His magnanimity accepted a trust as full of danger as of glory; but in a city where his Saviour had been crowned with thorns, the devout pilgrim rejected the name and ensigns of royalty; and the founder of the kingdom of Jerusalem contented himself with the modest title of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre. His government of a single year *, too short for the public happiness, was interrupted in the first fortnight by a summons to the field by the approach of the vizir or sultan of Egypt, who had been too slow to prevent, but who was impatient to avenge, the loss of Jerusalem. His total overthrow in the battle of Ascalon scaled the establishment of the Latins in Syria, and signalized the valour of the French princes, who in this action bade a long farewell to the holy wars. Some glory might be derived from the prodigious A. D. 1099, inequality of numbers, though I shall not count the August 12. myriads of horse and foot on the side of the Fati Battle of mites; but, except three thousand Ethiopians or blacks, who were armed with flails, or scourges of iron, the Barbarians of the South fled on the first onset, and afforded a pleasing comparison between the active valour of the Turks and the sloth and effeminacy of the natives of Egypt. After suspending before the holy sepulchre the sword and standard of the sultan, the new king (he deserves the title) embraced his departing companions, and could retain only with the gallant Tancred three hundred knights, and two thousand foot soldiers, for the defence of Palestine. His sovereignty was soon attacked by a new enemy, the only one against whom Godfrey was a coward. Adhemar, bishop of Puy, who excelled * See the election, the battle of Ascalon, &c. in William of Tyre, 1. ix. c. 1— 12, and in the conclusion of the Latin historians of the first crusade. both in council and action, had been swept away in the last plague of Antioch. Daimbert, archbishop of Pisa, had long been trained in the secret policy of Rome: he brought a fleet of his countrymen to the succour of the Holy Land, and was installed, without a competitor, the spiritual and temporal head of the church. The new patriarch immediately grasped the sceptre which had been acquired by the toil and blood of the victorious pilgrims; and both Godfrey and Bohemond submitted to receive at his hands the investiture of their feudal possessions. Nor was this sufficient; Daimbert claimed the immediate property of Jerusalem and Jaffa: instead of a firm and generous refusal, the hero negotiated with the priest; a quarter of either city was ceded to the church; and the modest bishop was satisfied with an eventual reversion of the rest, on the death of Godfrey without children, or on the future acquisition of a new seat at Cairo or Damascus. CHAP. XLIV. dom of A. D. 1099 Without this indulgence the conqueror would have The kingalmost been stripped of his infant kingdom, which Jerusalem, consisted only of Jerusalem and Jaffa, with about 1187. twenty villages and towns of the adjacent country. Within this narrow verge the Mahometans were still lodged in some impregnable castles; and the husbandman, the trader, and the pilgrims, were exposed to daily and domestic hostility. By the arms of Godfrey himself, and of the two Baldwins, his brother and cousin, who succeeded to the throne, the Latins breathed with more ease and safety; and at length they equalled, in the extent of their dominions, though not in the millions of their subjects, the ancient princes of Judah and Israel. After the reduction of the maritime cities of Laodicea, Tripoli, Tyre, and Ascalon *, which were powerfully assisted by the * These sieges are related, each in its proper place, in the great history of William of Tyre, from the 9th to the 18th book, and more briefly told by Bernardus Thesau CHAP. fleets of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, and even of FlanXLIV. ders and Norway, the range of sea-coast from Scanderoon to the borders of Egypt was possessed by the Christian pilgrims. If the prince of Antioch disclaimed his supremacy, the counts of Edessa and Tripoli owned themselves the vassals of the king of Jerusalem: the Latins reigned beyond the Euphrates; and the four cities of Hems, Hamah, Damascus, and Aleppo, were the only relics of the Mahometan conquests in Syria. Success of A. D. 1097 Whatever had been the fears and toils of Alexius* in the passage of the first crusade, they were amply recompensed by the subsequent benefits which he derived from the exploits of the Franks. His dexterity and vigilance secured their first conquest of Nice; and from this threatening station the Turks were compelled to evacuate the neighbourhood of Constantinople. While the crusaders, with blind valour, advanced into the midland countries of Asia, the crafty Greek improved the favourable occasion I when the emirs of the sea-coast were recalled to the standard of the sultan. The Turks were driven from the isles of Rhodes and Chios; the cities of Ephesus and Smyrna, of Sardes, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, were restored to the empire, which Alexius enlarged from the Hellespont to the banks of the Mæander, and the rocky shores of Pamphylia. The churches resumed their splendour; the towns were rebuilt and fortified; and the desert country was peopled with colonies of Christians, who were gently removed from the more distant and dangerous frontier. In these cares Alexius forgot the deliverance of the holy se rarius (De Acquisitione Terræ Sanctæ, c. 89--98, p. 732-740). Some domestic facts are celebrated in the Chronicles of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, in the 6th, 9th, and 12th tomes of Muratori. * Anna Comnena relates her father's conquests in Asia Minor (Alexiad, 1. xi. p. 321-325. 1. xiv. p. 419); his Cilician war against Tancred and Bohemond (p. 328-342); the war of Epirus, with tedious prolixity (l. xii. xiii. p. 345—406); the death of Bohemond (1. xiv. p. 419). XLIV. pulchre; and by the Latins he was stigmatized with CHAP. the foul reproach of treason and desertion. They had sworn fidelity and obedience to his throne; but he had promised to assist their enterprise in person, or, at least, with his troops and treasures: his base retreat dissolved their obligations; and the sword, which had been the instrument of their victory, was the pledge and title of their just independence. It does not appear that the emperor attempted to revive his obsolete claims over the kingdom of Jerusalem; but the borders of Cilicia and Syria were more recent in his possession, and more accessible to his arms. The great army of the crusaders was annihilated or dispersed; the principality of Antioch was left without a head, by the surprise and captivity of Bohemond: his ransom had oppressed him with a heavy debt; and his Norman followers were insufficient to repel the hostilities of the Greeks and Turks. In this distress Bohemond embraced a magnanimous resolution of leaving the defence of Antioch to his kinsman the faithful Tancred; of arming the West against the Byzantine empire; and of executing the design which he inherited from the lessons and example of his father Guiscard. His embarkation was clandestine; and if we may credit a tale of the princess Anne, he passed the hostile sea closely secreted in a coffin. But his reception in France was dignified by the public applause and his marriage with the king's daughter: his return was glorious, since the bravest spirits of the age inlisted under his veteran command; and he repassed the Adriatic at the head of five thousand horse and forty thousand foot, assembled from the most remote climates of Europe *. The strength of Durazzo and the prudence of Alexius, the progress of famine and approach of winter, eluded his ambi AT λns, in the Byzantine geography, must mean England; yet we are more credibly informed, that our Henry I. would not suffer him to levy any troops in his kingdom (Ducange, Not. ad Alexiad, p. 41). |