volume one

HISTORY OF TKE CEUSADES. 365
bourbood. Ezekiel boasts of its delicious wines, its numerous
workshops, and its wools of admirable tints ; and several
passages of Scripture represent Damascus as the abode of
voluptuousness and delight. The beauty of its gardens, and
the magnificence of its public edifices, many of which were
built of marble of difierent colours, were much admired.
Damascus, after being conquered in turn by the Hebrews,
the kings of Assyria, and the successors of Alexander, fell
into the hands of the Romans. From the age of Augustus
the preaching of St. Paul had filled it with Christians ; but
at the beginning of the Hegira it was attacked and taken
by the lieutenants of Mahomet, and a great part of the
inhabitants, who, after capitulation, endeavoured to seek an
asylum in Constantinople, were pursued and massacred by
the fi.erce conquerors, in the territories of Tripoli.
From this time, Damascus, which formed a government
or a principality, had remained in the power of the Mussidmans.
At the period of the second crusade, this principality,
attacked by turns by the Franks, the Ortokides, and the
Attabecks, and almost reduced to nothing but its capital,
belonged to a Mussulman prince, who had no less occasion
to defend himself against the ambition of the emirs than
the invasion of foreign enemies. Noureddin, master of
Aleppo and several other cities of Syria, had already made
several attempts to gain possession of Damascus, and had
by no means abandoned the hopes of uniting it to his other
conquests, when the Christians formed the resolution of
besieging it.
The city was defended by high walls on the east and the
south; whilst on the west and the north it had no other defence
but its numerous gardens, planted with trees, in all parts
of which were raised palisades, walls of earth, and little towers,
in which they could place archers. The Crusaders, when
ready to begin the siege, resolved in a coimcil to take possession
of the gardens first, hoping to find therein water and
abundance of fruits. But the enterprise was not Avithout
great difficulties ; for the orchards, which extended to the
foot of the Anti-Libanus, were like a vast forest, crossed by
narrow paths, ni which two men coiild scarcely walk abreast.
The infidels had everywhere thro^vn up intrenchments,
where they could, without danger to themselves, resist the