volume one

350 HISTOET OF THE CEUSADES.
\nll one day open the barriers of tho "West. The emperors
of Bvzantimn neither know how to defend their own pro-
ATQces nor will they suffer others to do it for them. They
haye always impeded the generous efforts of the soldiers of
the cross ; eyen lately, this emperor, who declares himself
your support, has endeayoured to dispute their conquests
^ith the Latins, and rayish from them the principality of
Antioch. His aim now is to dehver up the Christian armies
to the Saracens, Let us hasten then to preyent our own
ruin by effecting that of these traitors ; let us not leaye
behind us a jealous and insolent city, which only seeks the
means of destroying us ; let us cast upon lier the eyils she
prepares for us. K the G-reeks accomplish their perfidious
designs, it is of you the ~V\^est will one day ask back its
armies. Since the war we undertake is holy, is it not just
that we shoidd employ eyery means to succeed ? Necessity,
country, religion, all order you to do that which I propose
to you. The aqueducts which supply the city with water
are in our power, and offer an easy means of reducing the
inhabitants. The soldiers of Manuel cannot stand against
our battalions ;
a part of the walls and towers of Byzantium
has crumbled away before our eyes, as by a species of
miracle. It appears that God himself calls us into the
city of Constantine, and he opens its gates to you as he
opened the gates of Edessa, Antioch, and Jerusalem to your
fathers."*
T^^hen the bishop of Langres had ceased to speak, seyeral
knights and barons raised their yoices in reply. The Christians,
they said, were come into Asia to expiate their own
sins, and not to punish the crimes of the Greeks, They had
taken up arms to defend Jei'usalem, and not to destroy Con-
stantinople, It was true they must consider the Greeks as
heretics, but it was not more just for them to massacre them
than to massacre the Jews ; when the Christian wamors
assumed the cross, God did not put into their hands the
sword of justice. In a word, the barons found much more
policy than religion in that which they had heard, and coidd
not conceive that it was right to undertake an enterprise
* Odo de Deuil gives an account of this deliberation, and reports the
speech of the bishop of Langres, on whom he bestows the greatest praise.