volume one

HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES. 137
produced crimes more disgraceful than those they desired to
prevent.
Among all these calamities, the camp of the Crusaders
was filled with Syrian spies, who daily bore into the city
accounts of the plans, the distress, and the despair of the
besiegers. Bohemond, in order to deliver the army, employed
a means of a nature to disgust CA^en barbarians. My pen
refuses to trace such pictures, and I leave William of T}Te,
or rather his old translator, to speak. " Bohemond," says
he, " commanded that several Turks, M'hom he held in close
confinement, should be brought before him. These he
caused instantly to be executed by the hands of the officers
of justice, and then ordering a great fire to be lighted, he
had them spitted and roasted, as flesh prepared for the
supper of himself and his troops ; at the same time commanding,
that if any one made inquiries about what was
going on, that they should be answered in this fashion:
' The princes and rulers of the camp have this day decreed
in council, that all Turks or spies that shall henceforward he
found in their camp, shall he, in this maimer, forced to make
meat icith their oivn bodies, as ivell for the princes as the
tvhole army.^ "
The servants of Bohemond executed exactly the orders
and instructions which he had given them. The strangers
who were in the camp soon flocked to the quarters of the
prince of Tarentum, and when they saw what was going on,
adds our ancient author, ivere marvellously terrified, fearing
to share the fate of the victims. They made haste to quit
the camp of the Christians, and everywhere on their road
spread an account of that which they had seen. Their story
flew from mouth to mouth, even to tlie most distant countries :
the inhabitants of Antioch, and all the Mussulmans of the
Syrian cities, were seized with terror, and no more ventured
to approach the camp of the Crusaders. " By these means,"
says the historian we have above quoted, " it ensued from
the cunning and conduct of the seigneiir Bohemond, that
the pest of spies was banished from the camp, and the
enterprises of the Christians were not divulged to the
enemy."
The bishop of Buy, at the same time, employed a stratagem
much more innocent and conformable with the spirit of