hshed at Edessa, and Bohemond at Antioch; and two Roberts, the duke of Normandy 114 and the count of Flanders, preferred their fair inheritance in the West to a doubtful competition or a barren sceptre. The jealousy and ambition of Raymond were condemned by his own followers, and the free, the just, the unanimous voice of the army proclaimed Godfrey of Bouillon the first and most worthy of the champions of Christendom. His magnanimity accepted a trust as full of danger as of glory; but in a city where his Savior had been crowned with thorns, the devout pilgrim rejected the name and ensigns of royalty; and the founder of the kingdom of Jerusalem contented himself with the modest title of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre. His government of a single year,115 too short for the public happiness, was interrupted in the first fortnight by a summons to the field, by the approach of the vizier or sultan of Egypt, who had been too slow to prevent, but who was impatient to avenge, the Joss of Jerusalem. His total overthrow in the battle of AscaJon sealed the establishment of the Latins in Syria, and sig. nalized the valor of the French princes who in this action bade a long farewell to the holy wars. Some glory might be derived from the prodigious inequality of numbers, though I shall not count the myriads of horse and foot on the side of the Fatimites; but, except three thousand Ethiopians or Blacks, who were armed with flails or scourges of iron, the Barbarians of the South fled on the first onset, and afforded a pleasing comparison between the active valor of the Turks and the sloth and effeminacy of the natives of Egypt. After suspending before the holy sepulchre the sword and standard of the sultan, the new king (he deserves the title) embraced his departing companions, and could retain only with the gal. lant Tancred three hundred knights, and two thousand footsoldiers for the defence of Palestine. His sovereignty was

1414 The English ascribe to Robert of Normandy, and the Provincials to Raymond of Tholouse, the glory of refusing the crown; but the honest voice of tradition has preserved the memory of the ambition and revenge (Villehardouin, No. 136) of the count of St. Giles. Ho Idied at the siege of Tripoli, which was possessed by his descendants.

115 See the election, the battle of Ascalon, &c., in William of Tyre, L ix. c. 1—12, and in the conclusion of the Latin historians of the first musade.

30,000 Franks, 300,000 Mussuimen, according to Wilken, (val. ll. p. 9.)

BOOD attacked by a new enemy, the only one against whom Godfrey was a coward. Adhemar, bishop of Puy, who excelled both in council and action, had been swept away in the last plague of Antioch: the remaining ecclesiastics preserved only the pride and avarice of their character; and their seditious clamors had required that the choice of a bishop should precede that of a king. The revenue and jurisdiction of the lawful patriarch were usurped by the Latin clergy: the ex clusion of the Greeks and Syrians was justified by the reproach of heresy or schism; 116 and, under the iron yoke of their deliverers, the Oriental Christians regretted the tolerating government of the Arabian caliphs. Daimbert, archbishop of Pisa, had long been trained in the secret policy of Rome: he brought a fleet of his countrymen to the succor of the Holy Land, and was installed, without a competitor, the spiritual and temporal head of the church. The new patriarch 117 immediately grasped the sceptre which had been acquired by the toil and blood of the victorious pilgrims; and both Godfrey and Bohemond submitted to receive at his hands the investiture of their feudal possessions. Nor was this sufficient; Daimbert claimed the immediate property of Jerusalem and Jaffa; instead of a firm and generous refusal, the hero negotiated with the priest; a quarter of either city was ceded to the church; and the modest bishop was satisfied with an eventual reversion of the rest, on the death of Godfrey without children, or on the future acquisition of a new seat at Cairo or Damascus.

Without this indulgence, the conqueror would have almost been stripped of his infant kingdom, which consisted only of Jerusalem and Jaffa, with about twenty villages and towns of the adjacent country.1 118 Within this narrow verge, the Mahometans were still lodged in some impregnable castles: and

11 Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 479.

117 See the claims of the patriarch Daimbert, in William of Tyre, Lix. c. 15-18, x. 4, 7, 9,) who asserts with marvellous candor the Independence of the conquerors and kings of Jerusalem.

118 Willerm. Tyr. 1. x. 19. The Historia Hierosolimitana of Jacobus à Vitriaco (1. i. c. 21-60) and the Secreta Fidelium Crucis of Marinus Banutus (1. iii. p. 1) describe the state and conquests of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem.

• Arnulf was first chosen, but illegitimately, and degraded. He was ever after the secret enemy of Daimbert or Dagobert. Wilken, vol 1. p. 806, vol. ii. p. 62 -- M.

the husbandman, the trader, and the pilgrim, were exposed to daily and domestic hostility. By the arms of Godfrey himself, and of the two Baldwins, his brother and cousin, who succeeded to the throne, the Latins breathed with more ease and safety; and at length they equalled, in the extent of their dominions, though not in the millions of their subjects, the ancient princes of Judah and Israel.119 After the reduction of the maritime cities of Laodicea, Tripoli, Tyre, and Asca. lon,120 which were powerfully assisted by the fleets of Venice Genoa, and Pisa, and even of Flanders and Norway,121 the range of sea-coast from Scanderoon to the borders of Egypt was possessed by the Christian pilgrims. If the prince of Antioch disclaimed his supremacy, the counts of Edessa and Tripoli owned themselves the vassals of the king of Jerusalem: the Latins reigned beyond the Euphrates; and the four cities of Hems, Hamah, Damascus, and Aleppo, were the only elics of the Mahometan conquests in Syria.122 The laws and anguage, the manners and titles, of the French nation and Latin church, were introduced into these transmarine colo

119 An actual muster, not including the tribes of Levi and Benjamin, gave David an army of 1,300,000 or 1,574,000 fighting men; which, with the addition of women, children, and slaves, may imply a population of thirteen millions, in a country sixty leagues in length, and thirty broad. The honest and rational Le Clerc (Comment on 2d Samuel xxiv. and 1st Chronicles, xxi.) æstuat angusto in limite, and mutters his suspicion of a false transcript; a dangerous suspicion! *

120 These sieges are related, each in its proper place, in the great history of William of Tyre, from the ixth to the xviiith book, and more briefly told by Bernardus Thesaurarius, (de Acquisitione Terræ Sanctæ, c. 89-98, p. 732-740.) Some domestic facts are celebrated in the Chronicles of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, in the vith, ixth, and xiith tomes of Muratori.

131 Quidam populus de insulis occidentis egressus, et maxime de ea parte quæ Norvegia dicitur. William of Tyre (1. xi. c. 14, p. 804) marks their course per Britannicum Mare et Calpen to the siege of Sidon.

1 Benelathir, apud De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. part ii. p. 150, 151, A. D. 1127. He must speak cf the inland country.

• David determined to take a census of his var dominions, which extended from Lebanon to the frontiers of Egypt, from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean. The numbers (in 2 Sam. xxiv. 9, and 1 Chron. xxi. 5) differ; but the lowest gives 800,000 men fit to bear arms in Israel, 500,000 in Judah. Hist. of Jews, vol. i. p. 248. Gibbon has taken the highest sensus in his estimate of the population, and confined the dominions of David to cis-Jordanic Palestine.-M.

nies. According to the feudal jurisprudence, the principal states and subordinate baronies descended in the line of male and female succession: 123 but the children of the first con⚫ querors,194 a motley and degenerate race, were dissolved by the luxury of the climate; the arrival of new crusaders from Europe was a doubtful hope and a casual event. The ser vice of the feudal tenures 125 was performed by six hundred and sixty-six knights, who might expect the aid of two hun dred more under the banner of the count of Tripoli; and each knight was attended to the field by four squires or archers on horseback.126 Five thousand and seventy ser geants, most probably foot-soldiers, were supplied by the churches and cities; and the whole legal militia of the king dom could not exceed eleven thousand men, a slender defence against the surrounding myriads of Saracens and Turks.197 But the firmest bulwark of Jerusalem was founded on the knights of the Hospital of St. John,128 and of the temple of

13 Sanut very sensibly descants on the mischiefs of female succession, in a land hostibus circumdata, ubi cuncta virilia et virtuosa esse deberent. Yet, at the summons, and with the approbation, of her feudal lord, a noble damsel was obliged to choose a husband and champion, (Assises de Jerusalem, c. 242, &c.) See in M. De Guignes (tom. i. p. 441-471) the accurate and useful tables of these dynasties, which are chiefly drawn from the Lignages d''Outremer.

14 They were called by derision Poullains, Pullani, and their name is never pronounced without contempt, (Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. v. p. 535; and Observations sur Joinville, p. 84, 85; Jacob. à Vitriaco, Hist. Hierosol. 1. i. c. 67, 72; and Sanut, 1. iii. p. viii. c. 2, p. 182.) Illustrium virorum, qui ad Terræ Sanctæ. liberationem in ipsâ manserunt, degeneres filii . . . . in deliciis enutriti, molles et offeeminati, &c.

135 This authentic detail is extracted from the Assises de Jerusalem, (c. 324, 326-331.) Sanut (1. iii. p. viii. c. 1, p. 174) reckons only 618 knights, and 5775 followers.

128 The sum total, and the division, ascertain the service of the three great baronies at 100 knights each; and the text of the Assises, which extends the number to 500, can only be justified by this supposition. 17 Yet on great emergencies (says Sanut) the barons brought voluntary aid; decentem comitivam militum juxta statum suum.

18 William of Tyre (1. xviii. c. 3, 4, 5) relates the ignoble origin and early insolence of the Hospitalers, who soon deserted their humble patron, St. John the Eleemosynary, for the more august character of St. John the Baptist, (see the ineffectual struggles of Pagi, Critics, A. D. 1099, No. 14-18.) They assumed the profession of arms about the year 1120; the Hospital was mater; the Temple filia; the Teutonic order was founded A. D. 1190, at the siege of Acre, (Mosheim, Institut. p. 889, 390.)

loma; 199 on the strange association of a monastic and "itary life, which fanaticism might suggest, but which poli cy must approve. The flower of the nobility of Europe aspired to wear the cross, and to profess the vows, of these respectable orders; their spirit and discipline were immortal; and the speedy donation of twenty-eight thousand farms, or manors,130 enabled them to support a regular force of cavalry and infantry for the defence of Palestine. The austerity of the convent soon evaporated in the exercise of arms: the world was scandalized by the pride, avarice, and corruption of these Christian soldiers; their claims of immunity and ju sdiction disturbed the harmony of the church and state; and the public peace was endangered by their jealous emulation. But in their most dissolute period, the knights of their hospi tal and temple maintained their fearless and fanatic character: they neglected to live, but they were prepared to die, in the service of Christ; and the spirit of chivalry, the parent and offspring of the crusades, has been transplanted by this insti tution from the holy sepulchre to the Isle of Malta.131

The spirit of freedom, which pervades the feudal institu tions, was felt in its strongest energy by the volunteers of the cross, who elected for their chief the most deserving of his peers. Amidst the slaves of Asia, unconscious of the lesson or example, a model of political liberty was introduced; and the laws of the French kingdom are derived from the purest source of equality and justice. Of such laws, the first and indispensable condition is the assent of those whose obedience they require, and for whose benefit they are designed. No sooner had Godfrey of Bouillon accepted the office of supreme magistrate, than he solicited the public and private advice of the Latin pilgrims, who were the best skilled in the statutes

19 See St. Bernard de Laude Nova Militia Templi, composed A. D. 1132-1136, in Opp. tom. i. p. ii. p. 547–563, edit. Mabillon, Venet. 1750. Such an encomium, which is thrown away on the dead Tem. plars, would be highly valued by the historians of Malta.

130 Matthew Paris, Hist. Major, p. 544. He assigns to the Hospitallers 19,000, to the Templars 9,000 maneria, a word of much higher im port (as Ducange has rightly observed) in the English than in the French idiom. Manor is a lordship, manoir a dwelling.

131 In the three first books of the Histoire de Chevaliers de Malthe par l'Abbé de Vertot, the reader may amuse himself with a fsir, and sometimes flattering, picture of the order, while it was employed for the defence of Palestine. The subsequent books pursue their emai gration to Rhodes and Malta.