warms which might soon become an army of
devouring locusts round his own capital. It was easier to give them a
welcome than to get rid of them: and more than two months had passed
since Christmas, when the followers of Godfrey found themselves on the
soil of Asia.

Godfrey's men had no sooner been landed on the eastern side of the
Bosporus than all the vessels which had transported them were brought
back to the western shore. With great astuteness, and at the cost of
large gifts, Alexius in like manner freed the neighborhood of his
capital from the invading multitudes. As fast as they came they were
hurried across, and the Emperor breathed more freely when, on the Feast
of Pentecost, not a single Latin pilgrim remained on the European shore.

The danger of conflict had throughout been imminent; and the danger
arose, not so much from the fact that the crusaders were armed men,
marching through the country of professed allies, but from the thorough
antagonism between Greeks and Latins in modes of thought and habits of
life. Nor must we forget the vast gulf which separated the Eastern from
the Western clergy. The clergy of the West despised their brethren of
the East for their cowardly submission to the secular arm. These, in
their turn, shrunk with horror from the sight of bishops, priests, and
monks riding with blood-stained weapons over fields of battle, and
exhibiting at other times an ignorance equal to their ferocity.

The strength and valor of the crusaders were soon to be tested. They
were now face to face with the Turks, on whose cowardice Urban II had
enlarged with so much complacency before the Council of Clermont. The
sultan David, or Kilidje Arslan, placed his family and treasures in his
capital city of Nice and retreated with fifty thousand horsemen to the
mountains, whence he swooped down from time to time on the outposts of
the Christians. By these his city was formally invested; and for seven
weeks it was assailed to little purpose by the old instruments of Roman
warfare, while some of the besiegers shot their weapons from the hill on
which were mouldering the bones of the fanatic followers of Peter. It
was protected to the west by the Askanian lake, and so long as the Turks
had command of this lake they felt themselves safe. But Alexius sent
thither on sledges a large number of boats, and the city, subjected to a
double blockade, submitted to the Emperor, who was in no way anxious to
see the crusaders m