volume one

40
*
HISTOEY OF THE CRUSADES.
tunity of making war against the Mussulmans. The Saracens,
inhabiting Africa,* disturbed the navigation of the
Mediterranean, and threatened the coast of Italv. Victor
invited the Christians to take arms, and promised them the
remission of all their sins if they went to fight against the
infidels. The inhabitants of Pisa, Grenoa, and several other
cities, urged by their zeal for religion, and their desire to
defend their commerce, equipped fleets, levied troops, and
made a descent upon the coasts of Africa, where, if we are
to beheve the chronicles of the time, they cut in pieces an
army of one hundred thousand Saracens. That we may not
doubt, says Baronius, that God interested himself in the
cause of the Christians, on the very day on which the Italians
triumphed over the enemies of Christ, the news of the
victory was carried miraculously beyond the seas. After
having given up to the flames two cities, Al-Mahadia and
Sibila,t built within the territories of ancient Carthage, and
forced a king of Mauritania to pay a tribute to the Holy
See, the G-enoese and the Pisans returned to Italy, where the
spoils of the conquered were employed in ornamenting the
churches.
The pope Victor, however, died without realizing his
promise of attacking the infidels in Asia. The glory of
delivering Jerusalem belonged to a simple pilgrim, possessed
of no other power than the influence of his character and
his genius. Some assign an obscure origin to Peter the
Hermit ; others say he was descended from a noble family
of Picardy ; but all agree that he had an ignoble and vulgar
exterior. Born with a restless, active spirit, he sought,
in all conditions of life, for an object which he could meet
with iu none. The study of letters, bearing arms, cehbacy,
marriage, the ecclesiastical state, oflered nothing to him that
* This expedition, which was a true crusade, a^ pears to have been
forgotten by all the historians of the crusades.
f Al-Mdhadia, the chief of the citi?s conquered by the Christians,
according to Oriental geographers, was founded in the year 303 of ihe
Hegira, by Obeidallah, or Abdallah. It was still considerable in the
fifteenth century. Shaw, who saw it in 1730, calls it El-Medea. It is
situated thirty marine leagues south of Tunis. J^ibila, which is the other
city conquered in this expedition, and which Shaw takes for the ancient
Turris Annibalis, is two leagues more to the south, on the same coast of
the Mediterranean.