rmentors, that great numbers of Jews committed self-destruction
to avoid falling into their hands.

Again it fell to the lot of the Hungarians to deliver Europe from these
pests. When there were no more Jews to murder, the bands collected in
one body, and took the old route to the Holy Land, a route stained with
the blood of three hundred thousand who had gone before, and destined
also to receive theirs. The number of these swarms has never been
stated; but so many of them perished in Hungary, that contemporary
writers, despairing of giving any adequate idea of their multitudes,
state that the fields were actually heaped with their corpses, and that
for miles in its course the waters of the Danube were dyed with their
blood. It was at Mersburg, on the Danube, that the greatest slaughter
took place,--a slaughter so great as to amount almost to extermination.
The Hungarians for a while disputed the passage of the river, but the
crusaders forced their way across, and attacking the city with the
blind courage of madness, succeeded in making a breach in the walls. At
this moment of victory an unaccountable fear came over them. Throwing
down their arms they fled panic-stricken, no one knew why, and no one
knew whither. The Hungarians followed, sword in hand, and cut them down
without remorse, and in such numbers, that the stream of the Danube is
said to have been choked up by their unburied bodies.

This was the worst paroxysm of the madness of Europe; and this passed,
her chivalry stepped upon the scene. Men of cool heads, mature plans,
and invincible courage stood forward to lead and direct the grand
movement of Europe upon Asia. It is upon these men that romance has
lavished her most admiring epithets, leaving to the condemnation of
history the vileness and brutality of those who went before. Of these
leaders the most distinguished were Godfrey of Bouillon Duke of
Lorraine, and Raymond Count of Toulouse. Four other chiefs of the royal
blood of Europe also assumed the Cross, and led each his army to the
Holy Land: Hugh, Count of Vermandois, brother of the King of France;
Robert, Duke of Normandy, the elder brother of William Rufus; Robert
Count of Flanders, and Boemund Prince of Tarentum, eldest son of the
celebrated Robert Guiscard. These men were all tinged with the
fanaticism of the age, but none of them acted entirely from religious
motives. They were neither utterly reckless like Gautier sans Avoir,
crazy like Peter t