volume one

120 HISTORY OF THE CfiUSADES.
army, and preferred a principality to the love and esteem of
the Crusaders ; and fortune soon offered him an opportunity
of realizing his ambitious projects.
( During the siege of ]S^ice, an Armenian prince named
^j^Ht4iXPanciatius had come to join the ChiTifian army. In his
•-?
youth lie had been king of northern Iberia. Driven from
his kingdom by his own subjects, and for a length of time a
prisoner at Constantinople, he had followed the Crusaders in
the hope of re-concpiering his states. He had particularly
attached himself to the fortunes of Baldwin, whose aspiring
character he understood, and whom he hoped to associate in
his designs. He spoke to him continually of the rich provinces
which extended along the two shores of the Euphrates.^
These provinces, he said, were inhabited by a great number
of Christians, and the Crusaders had but to present themselves
there to make themselves masters of them. These
discourses inflamed the ambition of Baldwin, who resolved a
second time to qiut the main army of the Christians, and to
go to the banks of the Euphrates, to conquer a coiuitry of
such boasted wealth.
He had just lost his wife, Gimdechilde, who had accompanied
him to the crusade, and who was buried with great
pomp by the Christians. This loss did not stop him in the
execution of his projects. As he was not beloved in the
Christian army, when he was ready to set out no leader was
willing to join him, and several even of his own soldiers
refused to accompany him. He could only take with him
from a thousand to fifteen hundred foot-soldiers, a troop
despised in the army, and two hundred horsemen, seduced
by the hopes of pillage. But nothing coidd abate his ardour,
and as the chiefs of the crusade had decided in a
council that nobody should be allowed to withdraw from the
standard of the armv, he set out the dav before this decision
was published in the camp of the Christians.* At the head
of his little army he advanced into Armenia, finding no
enemy able to impede his march. Consternation reigned
among the Turks, and the Cln^istians, everj^where eager to
throw off the yoke of the Mussulmans, became powerful
auxiliaries to the Crusaders.
* When Baldwin quitted the Christian army, it had arrived at Marrash.
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