volume one

IIISTOIIT OF THE CRUSADES. 209
set in at the very time the pilgrims arrived before Jerusalem.
A scorching sun and southern vinds, loaded with the sands
of the desert, inflamed the horizon. Plants and animals
perished ;
the torrent of Kedron was dry, and all the cisterns
had been filled up or poisoned.* Under a sun of fire, and
amidst burning and arid plains, the Christian army soon
became a prey to all the horrors of thirst.
The fountain of Siloe, which only flowed at inten^als,
could not suffice for such a multitude. A skinful of fetid
water, brought from a distance of three leagues, cost as
much as three silver deniers. Overcome by thirst and heat,
the soldiers turned up the soil with their swords, and burying
themselves in the freshl3-moved earth, eagerly carried
to their lips every moist clod that presented itself During
the day they looked anxiously for the night, and at night
longed for the break of day, in the constantly disappointed
hope that the return of either the one or the other would
bring some little freshness, or a few drops of rain. Every
morning they were seen to glue their parched lips to the
marbles covered with dew. During the heat of the day the
most robust languished beneath their tents, seeming not to
have even strength left to implore the assistance of Heaven.
The knights and barons were not at all exempt from the
scourge which devoured the army, and many of them exchanged
for the water of which they stood in daily need, the
treasures they had won from the infidels. " Pity, on account
of this extreme thirst," says the old translator of William
of Tyre, " was not so much due to tlie foot-soldiers as the
horsemen ;
the foot-soldiers could be contented with a little,
but the horsemen could only supply their horses -^-ith drink
at great expense. As to the beasts of bui-then," adds the
same historian, " there was no more account taken of them
than of things abeady dead ; they were allowed to stray
away in the fields, where they died for want of water."
In this general misery the women and children dragged
their exhausted bodies across fields and plains, seeking
sometimes a spring and sometimes shade, neither of which
* An admirable picture is to be found in Tasso of this drought, which
is also described by Robert the Monk, Baldric, Raymond d'Agiles, Albert
d'Aix, William of Tyre, and by Gilles or Gilou, in his Latin poem upon the
first crusade.