Peter the Hermit Part 8

[Sidenote: _Constructing Engines of War_]

Finding some large beams, they demolished churches and houses to obtain other material. The drought of summer came on; the cisterns had been filled up or poisoned; Kedron ran dry, and thirst added its horrors. The intermitting fountain of Siloam was insufficient. The soldiers were reduced to licking the dew from the stones. Animals died in great numbers. The loot of great cities was exchanged for a few draughts of foul water. Fear alone prevented the sortie from the city which would have nearly extinguished the Christian army. Some fled. The wonder is that so many remained and saw that the only remedy for their evils lay in the capture of the city.

[Sidenote: _Aided by German Fleet_]

[Sidenote: _Scarcity of Water_]

As if a sudden gift from G.o.d, a German fleet reached Jaffa. It was well unloaded before capture by a Saracen fleet, and the detachment sent from the besiegers to open communication, searched Jaffa, and the provisions and instruments and material for war were carried to the Crusaders'

camp. Desiring yet more, a native led the Duke of Normandy to a forest thirty miles from the city, and this timber was dragged to the city.

Regular expeditions to find water were successfully organized, and lines of women and children quickly pa.s.sed it to the camp. Bunches of f.a.ggots were rapidly acc.u.mulated and machines of war grew each day, and were planted for the next attack. They made three towers higher than the walls of the city, with a draw-bridge, over which the besiegers might reach the top of the walls.

[Sidenote: _Religious Processions_]

[Sidenote: _Peter's Address_]

All being ready, they fortified their courage by religious exercises, and with the clergy leading, marched around the city. From the valley which faces Calvary, the Crusaders set out, pa.s.sing by the reputed tomb of Mary, the Garden of Gethsemane, and the Mount of Olives. They halted on the Mount of the Ascension to reconcile all differences and seal pardon with mutual prayer. The Saracens raised crosses on the walls, and denied them in every way which could be devised by a foul imagination.

After a long silence, Peter the Hermit once more finds voice: "You hear them! You hear their threats and blasphemies! Christ dies again on Calvary for your sins. Swear, swear to defend them. The army of infidels will soon disappear. The mosques shall be temples of the true G.o.d." And much more did Peter say after his old eloquent fas.h.i.+on, and with results which were wholly like those which followed his early preaching. The soldiers fell on each other's necks, praised G.o.d, and pledged themselves to finish the holy work they had begun. They pa.s.sed the night after their return to camp in prayer and in the reception of the holy sacrament.

The Mohammedans spent their time also in exercises of their religion, and thus both sides were animated by the extreme of devout zeal.

[Sidenote: _Saracen Machines_]

The Christian leaders resolved to make the attack before the courage of their army could diminish by longer contemplation of the difficulties and dangers of the a.s.sault. The Saracens had built up their machines opposite those of the Christians, and to the last determined, as their mechanism seemed more movable, to change their locality and attack at a less prepared spot. During the night G.o.dfrey moved his quarters to the gate of Kedar. With the greatest difficulty the tower on wheels and other machines were moved. Tancred got his machines ready between the gate of Damascus and the angular tower known later as the Tower of Tancred.

[Sidenote: _Filling a Ravine_]

A ravine which needed to be filled delayed Raymond, who succeeded, by paying a small sum to every one who would throw three stones, in building, in three days, a good path across the ravine. This done, the signal was given for a general attack.

[Sidenote: _The Fight Begins_]

The camp of the Christians was summoned to arms by the trumpets on the 14th of July, 1099. Men and machines began their awful task. The air was full of flints hurled to the walls by ballistas and mangonels. Under large s.h.i.+elds and covered galleries, the battering-rams approached the walls. A cloud of arrows swept the ramparts, and the ladders were erected at the most promising points. Northeast and south the rolling towers were pushed to the walls, and G.o.dfrey set the example of being first to open the battle from their tops. The resistance was as vigorous as the attack. Arrows, spears, boiling oil, Greek fire, and the missiles from the besieged machines repulsed the attack. Through a hole made by the besiegers the besieged attacked the machines of the Christians, hoping to burn them. Night came on after a twelve hours'

fight without victory to either side.

[Sidenote: _Battle of Second Day_]

[Sidenote: _Saracens Attempt to Burn Towers_]

The next day, after a night spent in repairing the attacking machines on the one hand and the guardian walls on the other, the order to attack was early given after heartening speeches by the Christian leaders and tent-to-tent visitations by the clergy. An Egyptian army was reported as approaching and the report greatly encouraged the besieged. The besiegers were infuriated by a damaging resistance, whose strength and energy they had underrated. The battle opened with a fierceness unparalleled. Javelins, stones, and beams were hurled in such numbers that some met in the air and both fell on the besiegers. Flaming torches and firepots were hurled from the walls. The Christian towers did their work in the midst of flames, particularly the Tower of G.o.dfrey, on whose roof a golden cross shone. The leaders fought amidst piles of their dead and seemed to be invulnerable themselves. Breaches were made in the walls behind which stood a living barricade of Saracens. An Egyptian emissary was caught, his message to the besieged squeezed from him, and his body was then hurled from a catapult into the city. The wooden machines of the Christians began to burn, as well as the battering-rams and their roofs, while their guards and operators were crushed and buried under their ruins. The attacking force was fought to a standstill, and was reviled for their wors.h.i.+p of a helpless G.o.d.

[Sidenote: _Body Hurled From Catapult_]

[Sidenote: _Inspiring Vision_]

[Sidenote: _Crusaders Enter City_]

A vision of a knight waving his buckler above the Mount of Olives, and signaling that the Christians should advance, renewed the attack. It is said women and children defied all dangers, brought food and helped push the towers against the walls. G.o.dfrey's Tower got near enough to lower its gangway on the walls. Fire now came to the aid of the Crusaders, being carried by a favoring wind to the bags of hay, straw, and wool which made the last inner defense. G.o.dfrey, preceded by two and followed by many, pursued the smoke-driven enemy and entered the city. They killed as they went. Tancred, encouraged by another apparition, entered the city from another point; some through a breach; others by ladders; others from the top of the towers. The enemy at length fled, and the cry heard first under Peter's preaching, "G.o.d wills it!" was echoed in the streets of the Holy City. While these were in the city, Raymond still met with resistance which led them to abandon their tower and machines, and to attack with the sword. They scaled the walls by ladders, and were soon the victors.

The Saracens made a brave rally and charged the Christians, who had already begun to pillage. These were, however, soon led to victory by Everard de Puysaie, and the infidels were finally routed.

[Sidenote: _Christians Possess the City on Friday_]

Where prodigies are so constantly related and truth sacrificed to marvels, we can not be certain that the statement is true that the Christians entered Jerusalem on a Friday at three, at the same hour at which Christ died for all men. The Crusaders forgot the teaching of the hour; remembered only their wounds, losses, and sufferings, and put to death without mercy all who came in their way and all they could ferret out.

[Sidenote: _Christians Murder Saracens_]

Death by jumping from the walls seemed more desirable to many than appeal to Christian mercy. Their last resort was to the mosques, and particularly the Mosque of Omar. Into this the Christians rode on horseback and trampled the heaps of dead and dying laid low by "Christian" swords. An eyewitness, Raymond d'Agiles, says that in the porch of this mosque blood rose to the knees and bridles of the horses!

Ten thousand were slain there. The authority cited above declares that bodies floated in the blood, and arms and hands were tossed by sanguine waves. An Arabian author says, "Seventy thousand were killed in the Mosque of Omar." G.o.d alone knows the truth. Only once before in human history can be found a record of such slaughter, and that was when t.i.tus conquered the city centuries before.

[Sidenote: _Peter Object of Great Interest_]

The fame of Peter the Hermit was such that the Christians of the city coming from their hiding-places to greet their deliverers had no eyes for anybody but the eloquent monk, nor praises for any other. He was the sole cause of their deliverance as he was the prophet of their cause.

[Sidenote: _G.o.dfrey Goes to Holy Sepulcher_]

The n.o.bility of G.o.dfrey appears in this, that, refraining from revenge, as soon as the battle was over he laid aside his weapons, bared his feet, and went to pray at the Holy Sepulcher. This was the signal for the cessation of bloodshed as soon as known. The b.l.o.o.d.y garments were thrown aside, and, barefooted and bareheaded, the Crusaders marched to the Church of the Resurrection.

In this sudden change from fiends to the penitence and devoutness of Christians, we note a constantly recurring fact. These changes of mood are characteristic of fanaticism, which is always possessed by its ideas, and never rules over them. Elijah stepped down from the exaltation of the G.o.d-accepted prophet on Carmel to be the murderer of the prophets of Baal, and was left to cowardice, to melancholy, and to wandering in the desert until taught by the fire, the wind, and the earthquake that he was not to bring human pa.s.sion into G.o.d's work.

[Sidenote: _Crusaders Again Butcher Saracens_]

The Crusaders seem to have learned no permanent lesson of pity. They soon returned to the sword. Fearing the care of too many prisoners; dreading that, if released, they would have to fight them again, and feeling that they must make ready to meet an Egyptian army whose arrival was daily expected, they decreed the death of all the unbelievers who remained in the city. Pa.s.sion energized policy. They compelled the Saracens to leap from the walls or into flames, and heaped up their corpses as altars on which others were sacrificed. The city was everywhere strewn with corpses, even, as one remarks, "the very place where Christ forgave His enemies." The habit of killing was now so inveterate that such sights distressed none except as the odors and dangers of pestilence. A few Mussulmans, saved chiefly from the fortress of David, were compelled to remove for burial the bodies of their kindred and people beyond the walls. The soldiers of Raymond aided them, not from motives of humanity, but because being the last to enter the city, they hoped to secure what they had missed in pillage by robbing the bodies of the dead.

[Sidenote: _Heaps of Corpses_]

The city was soon cleaned, and, as all respected the marks of private owners.h.i.+p upon which the Crusaders had agreed, they were enriched and soon contributed to the life of a most orderly city.

[Sidenote: _Exhibition of True Cross_]

It will be recalled that when Heraclius conquered Chosroes he claimed to have brought back the true cross to Jerusalem. During the Saracenic occupation the Christians had concealed it and now brought it forth for the adoration of the faithful. With triumph they bore it to the Church of the Resurrection.

[Sidenote: _G.o.dfrey Refuses Crown_]

The question of government was settled, after debate, fasting, some ceremony and prayer, by a special Council of Ten. G.o.dfrey of Bouillon was chosen king with acclamation, all but universal, yet he refused to receive a diadem because his Savior had in that city worn a crown of thorns, and would receive no other t.i.tle beyond "Defender of the Holy Sepulcher."

The effort to organize the Church admittedly was less successful in putting wise and holy men in high places than the attempt to elect a suitable king. The bishops of the Latin Church, then as now, took high ground, claimed to be above the civil power, and demanded that the bulk of the captured wealth be put into their hands. The Greek priests had the right of possession, but were sacrificed. Simeon, who had invited the Crusaders, and who from Cypress had repeatedly sent the Latins succor, died while a Latin bishop was claiming his patriarchate. Arnold, believed by most to be tainted, was made pastor of Jerusalem.

[Sidenote: _Arrogance of the Latin Bishops_]

[Sidenote: _A New Peril_]

The Saracens, much as they had suffered, were not ready to abandon the field. Such as were left joined the Caliph of Cairo who was advancing to attack Jerusalem. G.o.dfrey, deserted by some of his colleagues, went out to meet him; the deserters following after when the peril became more visible and imminent. Peter led the clergy and prayed for a final success. They numbered not more than twenty thousand, yet they won a great victory, some of their enemies being driven to the mountains, others peris.h.i.+ng in the sea. They dropped their arms in terror, and were literally mowed down. Thus ended the battle of Askalon, and it was the last victory of the first Crusade.

[Sidenote: _Peter and His End_]

Peter returned to Europe, resumed a quiet life in a monastery, which was built at Huy on the right bank of the Meuse, in pursuance of a vow made when in danger at sea by Peter's fellow voyager, the Count de Montaigne.

It was dedicated in 1130. Peter died there at a great age, and was buried at his request outside the church on the ground of humility. One hundred and thirty years later the abbot removed (in 1242) his bones to a shrine before the Altar of the Apostles in the Abbey Church. His life was ended, "but his works followed him."

The church where he was buried was wasted and wrecked during the French Revolution and Peter's coffin destroyed. His gravestone still exists.