volume one

HISTOET OF THE CEUSADES. 343
numerous guilty violences to expiate. The spirit of chivalry,
which was every day making fresh progress, was not a less
powerful principle with a nobility purely and entiiely warhke.
A great number of women, attracted by tlie example of
Eleanor of Guienne, took up the cross, and armed themselves
with sword and lance. A crowd of knights eagerly followed
them ;
and indeed a species of shame seemed attached to all
who did not go to fight the infidels. History relates that
distaffs and spindles were sent to those who would not take
arms, as an appropriate reproach for their cowardice. The
troubadours and trouveres, whose songs were so much liked,
and who employed themselves in singing the victories of
knights over the Saracens, determined to follow into Asia
the heroes and the dames they had celebrated in their verses.
Queen Eleanor and Louis the Young took several troubadours
and minstrels with them into the East, to alleviate
the tediousness of a long journey.
And yet the enthusiasm of the Crusaders did not bear
quite the same character as that of the first crusade. The
world was not, in their eyes, filled with those prodigies
which proclaim the especial will of Heaven ; great phenomena
of nature did not work upon the imagination of the
pilgrims so vividly. God seemed to have delegated all his
power to a single man, who led the people at his will by his
eloquence and his miracles. Nobody was seen, nobody was
heard, but St. Bernard ; whereas in the time of Peter the
Hermit orators everywhere abounded, and nature seemed
charged by God himself to promote the crusade.
The only extraordinary occurrence of the time was the
peace w^hich prevailed throughout Em-ope.* As at the
approach of the first crusade, wars between indi\'iduals, civil
troubles, and public outrage ceased all at once. The departure
of the Crusaders was accompanied by less disorder
than at the setting out of the first expedition ; they neither
* A German historian speaks thus of this crusade :—Si autem aliter
non, hac tamen ratione, exitum habuit expeditio frequens, purgaretur eo
genera hominum qui rapinis consueverunt victitare ; moestum devotione
qualicunque, omnes id genus homines, pro remedio peccatorum sacram
amplexi militiam, in earn nomine dedere volentes expeditionem. Krantz,
vi. sax. c. 13 ; De Regibus Hierosoli/morum, auctore Christophano
Besoldo, p. 214.
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