volume one

206 HISTOEY or THE CRUSADES.
afterwards he pitched his tents upon the very summit of the
mountain, at the place where Christ celebrated Easter. By
these dispositions the Crusaders left ti-ee the sides of the
citv which were defended on the south by the valley of
(xibon or Siloe, and towards the east by the valley of Jehoshaphat.*
Every step that the pilgrims took around Jerusalem
brought to their minds some remembrance dear to their
religion. In this territorv, so revered by the Christians,
there was not a valley, not a rock which had not a name in
sacred history. All that they saw awakened or warmed
their enthusiasm. They could not withdraw their eyes
from the holy citv, or cease to lament over the state of
debasement into which it had fallen. This citv, once so
sunerb, looked as if buried in its own ruins, and thev then
might, to employ the expression of Josephus, have asked in
Jerusalem itself where was Jerusalem ? "With its square
houses without windows, surmoimted by flat terraces, it
appeared to the Crusaders like an enormous 2iass of stones
heaped up between rocks. They could only perceive here
and there in its bosom a few cypresses and some clumps of
aloes and terebinthi, among which arose steeples in the
quarter of the Christians, and mosques in that of the
intldels. In the valleys and the fields adjacent to the city,
which ancient traditions describe as covered with gardens
and groves, there struggled into gro^\i:h a few scattered
olives and thorny shrubs. The sight of these sterile plains,
and of the mountains burnt up by an ardent sun, offered to
the pilgrims nothing but images of mourning, and mingled
a melancholy sadness with their religious sentiments. They
seemed to hear the voices of the prophets which had announced
the servitude and the misfortunes of the city of
God, and, in the excess of their devotion, they thought
themselves called upon to restore it to its ancient greatness
and splendour.
That which still further inflamed the zeal of the Crusaders
* In comparing the description of the siege of Jerusalem by the Crusaders
\\ ith ihat ut the siege which the Romans carried on under Vespasian,
vce tind that the quarters of Godfrey were in the same place as those of
Titus, when he directed his first attacks against the city. See the History
of Josephus.