CHAP. VI.] 



THE CRUSADES. 



169 



the Moslem. The Crusades are the most striking and pecu- 

 liar feature of the middle ages, and the records of them 

 convey much instruction to the military reader, not so 

 much on account of any influence that they exerted on 

 the development of the art of war, as for the light 

 thrown upon the method of warfare of the time. 



The first crusaders were an undisciplined rabble, con- 

 sisting of fanatics of the worst class, who did more 

 injury to the Christian nations through which they 

 passed, than to the infidels they had sworn to conquer/ 

 Without organisation, without a commissariat, without 

 supplies, or the means of obtaining them, they first 

 begged, then robbed and plundered, until they were set 

 upon by the exasperated inhabitants of Hungary, and 

 massacred in immense numbers.^ A few only, under 

 Walter the Penniless and Peter the Hermit, crossed the 

 Bosphorus, when, quarrelling among themselves, they 

 separated, and were destroyed in detail by the armies of 

 the Sultan Solimaun.^ 



Other plundering bands started for the Holy Land, 

 and committing worse outrages than their predecessors, 

 were set upon and destroyed, without one ever reaching 

 Palestine.^ Then the chivalry came upon the scene, and 

 the most skilful generals of the day stepped forward to 

 lead and control the great movement of Christianity 

 against infidelity, of Frank against Turk. Codfrey de 

 Bouillon, Raymond of Toulouse, Robert of Normandy, 

 and the Count of Flanders, as well as other nobles of 

 great distinction, gathered around them the flower of 

 the nobility of France and Italy, with some few of the 

 knights of England and Germany, and with an immense 

 army undertook the first organised military crusade. 



They marched by difierent roads, in order the easier 

 to supply the troops with food on the way, timing their 

 movements so as to concentrate at Constantinople. Their 

 arrangements in this respect are in marked contrast to 

 the ill-advised and wretched management of the rabble 

 that had preceded them. In spite of this they had not 



Michaud. • Mackay. ^ Ibid. ii. 19. 



Ibid. 20. 



