the soldiers assembled around him redoubled their solicitations. At length he seemed to yield to their importunities, and obey their will. Instantly the eagerness and enthusiasm became more animated and more general. In an incredibly short space of time the whole army swore to follow him into Palestine. Roger was obliged to raise the siege of Amalfi, and the happy Bohémond gave himself up entirely to the preparations for his voyage.
A short time after he embarked for the coasts of Greece with ten thousand horsemen and twenty thousand foot. Every illustrious knight of Apulia and Sicily followed the prince of Tarentum. With him marched Richard, prince of Salerno, and Randulf, his brother; Herman de Cani, Robert de Hanse, Robert de Sourdeval, Robert the son of Tristan, Boile de Chartres, and Humphrey de Montaigu. All these warriors were celebrated for their exploits, but no one amongst them was more worthy to attract the attention of posterity than the brave Tancred.[67] Although he belonged to a family in which ambition was hereditary, he was fired by no other passion than a desire to fight against the infidels. Piety, glory, and perhaps his friendship for Bohémond alone, led him into Asia. His contemporaries admired his romantic pride and his haughty austerity. He yielded to no superiority but that of virtue, with the exception of occasional submission to the power of beauty. A stranger to all the motives and interests of policy, he acknowledged no other law but religion and honour, and was always ready to die in their cause. The annals of chivalry present no model more accomplished; poetry and history have united to celebrate him, and both have heaped upon him the same praises.
The Crusaders from the southern provinces of France had marched under the command of Adhémar de Monteil and Raymond, count de St. Gilles and Thoulouse. Bishop Adhémar acted as the spiritual chief of the crusade; his title of apostolic legate, and his personal qualities, earned for him in the holy war the confidence and respect of the pilgrims. His exhortations and his counsels contributed greatly to the maintaining of order and discipline. He consoled the Crusaders in their reverses, he animated them amidst dangers; clothed at the same time with the insignia of a pontiff and the armour of a knight, he exhibited in the tent a model of the Christian virtues, and in the field often gave proofs of undaunted valour.
Raymond, who marched with Adhémar, had had the glory of fighting in Spain by the side of the Cid; and of conquering several times the Moors under Alphonso the Great, who had bestowed his daughter Elvira upon him in marriage. His vast possessions on the banks of the Rhone and the Dordogne, and still more his exploits against the Saracens, rendered him one of the most remarkable among the great leaders of the crusade. Age had not extinguished in the count of Thoulouse either the ardour or the passions of youth. Hasty and impetuous, of a character haughty and inflexible, he had less ambition to conquer kingdoms than to make every will bend beneath his own. Both Greeks and Saracens have acknowledged his bravery. His subjects and his companions in arms hated him for his obstinacy and violence. Unhappy prince, he bade eternal farewell to his country, which was one day to be the theatre of a terrible crusade preached against his own family!
All the nobility of Gascony, Languedoc, Provence, the Limousin, and Auvergne, accompanied Raymond and Adhémar. Contemporary historians name among the knights and lords who had taken the cross, Héracle, count de Polignac, Pons de Balazan, Guillaume de Sabran, Eléazar de Castrie, Eléazar de Montrédon, Pierre Bernard de Montagnac, Raymond de Lille, Pierre Raymond de Hautpool, Gouffier de Lastours, Guillaume V., lord of Montpellier, Roger, count de Foix, Raymond Pelet, Seigneur d’Alais, Isard, count de Diè, Raimbaud, count d’Orange, Guillaume, count de Ferez, Guillaume, count de Clermont, Gerard, son of Guillabert, count de Roussillon, Gaston, viscount de Béarn, Guillaume Amanjeu d’Albret, Raymond, viscount de Turenne, Raymond, viscount de Castillon, Guillaume d’Urgal, and the count de Fortcalquier. After the example of Adhémar, the bishops of Apt, Lodève, and Orange, and the archbishop of Toledo, had taken up the cross, and led a part of their vassals to the holy war.
Raymond, count of Thoulouse, followed by his wife Elvira and his sons, placed himself at the head of a hundred thousand Crusaders, advanced to Lyons, where he crossed the Rhone, traversed the Alps, Lombardy, and Frioul, and directed his march towards the territory of the Greek empire, over the savage mountains and through the equally savage nations of Dalmatia.[68]
Alexis, who had implored the assistance of the Latins, was terrified when he learnt the numbers of his liberators. The leaders of the crusade were only princes of the second order, but they drew with them all the forces of the West. Anna Comnena compares the multitude of the Crusaders to the sands of the sea or the stars of the heavens, and their innumerable bands to torrents which unite to form a great river.[69] Alexis had learnt to dread Bohémond on the plains of Durazzo and Larissa. Although he was less acquainted with the courage and ability of the other Latin princes, he repented of having imparted to them the secret of his weakness by asking their aid. His alarms, which were increased by the predictions of astrologers and the opinions spread among his people, became more serious as the Crusaders advanced towards his capital.[70]
Seated on a throne from which he had hurled his master and benefactor, he could have no faith in virtue, and was better aware than another what ambition might dictate. He had displayed some courage in gaining the purple, but only governed by dissimulation,—the ordinary policy of the Greeks and all weak states. If Anna Comnena has made an accomplished prince of him, the Latins have represented him as a perfidious and cruel monarch. Impartial history, which alike rejects the exaggerations of eulogy or satire, can see nothing in Alexis but a weak ruler, of a superstitious character, led away much more by a love of vain splendour and display than by any passion for glory. He had it in his power to put himself at the head of the Crusaders, and reconquer Asia Minor, by marching with the Latins to Jerusalem. This great enterprize alarmed his weakness. His timid prudence made him believe that it would be sufficient to deceive the Crusaders to have nothing to fear from them, and to receive a vain homage from them in order to profit by their victories. Everything appeared good and just to him which would assist in extricating him from a position of which his policy increased the dangers, and which the unsteadiness of his projects made every day more embarrassing. The more earnestly he endeavoured to inspire confidence, the more suspicious he rendered his good faith. By seeking to inspire fear, he discovered all the alarms which he himself experienced. As soon as he had notice of the march of the princes of the crusade, he sent them ambassadors to compliment them, and to penetrate their intentions. In the meanwhile, he placed troops everywhere to harass them on their passage.
The count de Vermandois, cast by a tempest on the shores of Epirus, received the greatest honours from the governor of Durazzo, and was led a prisoner to Constantinople by the orders of Alexis. The Greek emperor hoped that the brother of the king of France would become, in his hands, a hostage that might protect him from the enterprizes of the Latins; but he only awakened suspicion, and provoked the hatred of the leaders of the crusade. Godfrey de Bouillon had arrived at Philippopoli, when he heard of the captivity of the count de Vermandois. He sent to the emperor to demand instant reparation for this outrage; and as the deputies reported but an unfavourable answer, he restrained neither his own indignation nor the fury of his army. The lands through which they passed were treated as an enemy’s country, and during eight days the fertile plains of Thrace became the theatre of war. The crowd of Greeks who fled towards the capital soon informed the emperor of the terrible vengeance of the Latins. Alexis, terrified at the fruits of his own policy, implored the pardon of his prisoner, and promised to restore him his liberty when the French should have arrived at the gates of Constantinople. This promise appeased Godfrey, who caused the war to cease, and resumed his march, treating the Greeks everywhere as friends and allies.
In the meanwhile, Alexis employed every effort to obtain from the count de Vermandois the oath of obedience and fidelity, hoping that his submission would lead to that of the other princes of the crusade, and that he should have less to fear from their ambition if he could reckon them in the number of his vassals. The brother of the king of France, who, on arriving in the territories of the empire, had written letters filled with
