entire
circuit; and the perpetual freedom of two gates relieved the wants and
recruited the garrison of the city. At the end of seven months, after
the ruin of their cavalry, and an enormous loss by famine, desertion
and fatigue, the progress of the crusaders was imperceptible, and their
success remote, if the Latin Ulysses, the artful and ambitious Bohemond,
had not employed the arms of cunning and deceit. The Christians of
Antioch were numerous and discontented: Phirouz, a Syrian renegado, had
acquired the favor of the emir and the command of three towers; and the
merit of his repentance disguised to the Latins, and perhaps to himself,
the foul design of perfidy and treason. A secret correspondence, for
their mutual interest, was soon established between Phirouz and the
prince of Tarento; and Bohemond declared in the council of the chiefs,
that he could deliver the city into their hands. But he claimed the
sovereignty of Antioch as the reward of his service; and the proposal
which had been rejected by the envy, was at length extorted from the
distress, of his equals. The nocturnal surprise was executed by the
French and Norman princes, who ascended in person the scaling-ladders
that were thrown from the walls: their new proselyte, after the murder
of his too scrupulous brother, embraced and introduced the servants of
Christ; the army rushed through the gates; and the Moslems soon found,
that although mercy was hopeless, resistance was impotent. But the
citadel still refused to surrender; and the victims themselves were
speedily encompassed and besieged by the innumerable forces of Kerboga,
prince of Mosul, who, with twenty-eight Turkish emirs, advanced to the
deliverance of Antioch. Five-and-twenty days the Christians spent on
the verge of destruction; and the proud lieutenant of the caliph and
the sultan left them only the choice of servitude or death. In this
extremity they collected the relics of their strength, sallied from the
town, and in a single memorable day, annihilated or dispersed the host
of Turks and Arabians, which they might safely report to have consisted
of six hundred thousand men. Their supernatural allies I shall proceed
to consider: the human causes of the victory of Antioch were the
fearless despair of the Franks; and the surprise, the discord, perhaps
the errors, of their unskilful and presumptuous adversaries. The battle
is described with as much disorder as it was fought; but we may observe
t