_]

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." God alone knows the truth. Only once before in human
history can be found a record of such slaughter, and that was when Titus
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: _Godfrey Goes to Holy Sepulcher_]

The nobility of Godfrey 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 bloody 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 God-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 passion into God'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 expect