volume one

30 HISTOET OF THE CEUSADES,
to Palestine. This numerous caravan, Avliich was the
forerunner of the Crusades,* crossed Germany, Hungary,
Bulgaria, and Thrace, and was welcomed at Constantinople
by the emperor Constantino Ducas, After haAing Aisited
the churches of Byzantium, and the numerous relics which
were the objects of the veneration of the Greeks, the pilgrims
of the AVest traversed Asia Minor and Syria without danger;
but when they approached Jerusalem, the sight of their
riches aroused the cupidity of the Bedouin Arabs, undisciphned
hordes, who had neither country" nor settled abode,
and who had rendered themselves fonnidable in the civil
wars of the East. The Arabs attached the pilgrims of the
West, and compelled them to sustain a siege in an abandoned
Aillage ; and tjiis was on a Good Friday. On such a
sacred day, the pilgrims even who had arms employed them
with much hesitation and scruple. Enclosed within the
ruins of an old castle, they resisted for a time, but on the
third day famine compelled them to capitulate. When they
came to the arrangement of the conditions of the peace,
there arose a violent quarrel, which was near leading to the
massacre of all the Christians by the Arabs. The emir of
Eamala, informed by some fugitives, came happily to their
rescue, delivered them from the death with which they were
threatened, and permitted them to continue their journey.
As the report of their combats and their perils had preceded
them, their arrival created a great sensation in Jerusalem.
They were received in triumph by the patriarch, and conducted,
to the sound of timbrels and bv the lio;ht of torches,
to the church of the Holy Sepulchre. During their abode
at Jerusalem, the misery into which they were fallen excited
the pity of the Christians. They could not visit the banks
of the Jordan, or the places most renowned in Judea, as
these were all now infested by the Arabs and exposed to
their incursions. After haAing lost more than three thousand
of their companions, they retiu'ned to Europe, to relate
* Ingulfus, a Norman monk, who Lad accompanied the pilgrims who
left Normandy, has made the relation of this pilgrimage. The account of
Ingulfus has been copied almost literally by Baironius. An account of
the same pilgrimage is likewise to be found ii; the chronicle of Marianus
gcotus, pp. 429, 430.