rovide a
remedy. The Greek emperor, Alexius Comnenus, who had applied to the
western Christians for succour against the Turks, entertained hopes,
and those but feeble ones, of obtaining such a moderate supply, as,
acting under his command, might enable him to repulse the enemy: but
he was extremely astonished to see his dominions overwhelmed, on a
sudden, by such an inundation of licentious barbarians, who, though
they pretended friendship, despised his subjects as unwarlike, and
detested them as heretical. By all the arts of policy, in which he
excelled, he endeavoured to divert the torrent; but while he employed
professions, caresses, civilities, and seeming services towards the
leaders of the crusade, he secretly regarded those imperious allies as
more dangerous than the open enemies by whom his empire had been
formerly invaded. Having effected that difficult point of
disembarking them safely in Asia, he entered into a private
correspondence with Soliman, Emperor of the Turks; and practised every
insidious art, which his genius, his power, or his situation enabled
him to employ, for disappointing the enterprise, and discouraging the
Latins from making thenceforward any such prodigious migrations. His
dangerous policy was seconded by the disorders inseparable from so
vast a multitude, who were not united under one head, and were
conducted by leaders of the most independent, intractable spirit,
unacquainted with military discipline, and determined enemies to civil
authority and submission. The scarcity of provisions, the excess of
fatigue, the influence of unknown climates, joined to the want of
concert in their operations, and to the sword of a warlike enemy,
destroyed the adventurers by thousands, and would have abated the
ardour of men impelled to war by less powerful motives. Their zeal,
however, their bravery, and their irresistible force, still carried
them forward, and continually advanced them to the great end of their
enterprise. After an obstinate siege they took Nice, the seat of the
Turkish empire; they defeated Soliman in two great battles; they made
themselves masters of Antioch; and entirely broke the force of the
Turks, who had so long retained those countries in subjection: the
Soldan of Egypt, whose alliance they had hitherto courted, recovered,
on the fall of the Turkish power, his former authority in Jerusalem;
and he informed them by his ambassadors, that if they came disarmed to
that city,