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By Root 20192 0

and the lance were unavailing weapons. In the slow and successive labors of a siege, the crusaders were supine and ignorant, without skill to contrive, or money to purchase, or industry to use, the artificial engines and implements of assault. In the conquest of Nice, they had been powerfully assisted by the wealth and knowledge of the Greek emperor: his absence was poorly supplied by some Genoese and Pisan vessels, that were attracted by religion or trade to the coast of Syria: the stores were scanty, the return precarious, and the communication difficult and dangerous. Indolence or weakness had prevented the Franks from investing the 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. ^93 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. ^94 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 the tent of Kerboga, a movable and spacious palace, enriched with the luxury of Asia, and capable of holding above two thousand persons; we may distinguish his three thousand guards, who were cased, the horse as well as the men, in complete steel.

[Footnote *: This bridge was over the Ifrin, not the Orontes, at a distance of three leagues from Antioch. See Wilken, vol. i. p. 172. - M.]

[Footnote 90: For Antioch, see Pocock, (Description of the East, vol. ii. p. i. p. 188 - 193,) Otter, (Voyage en Turquie, &c., tom. i. p. 81, &c.,) the Turkish geographer, (in Otter's notes,) the Index Geographicus of Schultens, (ad calcem Bohadin. Vit. Saladin.,) and Abulfeda, (Tabula Syriae, p. 115, 116, vers. Reiske.)]

[Footnote 91: Ensem elevat, eumque a sinistra parte scapularum, tanta virtute intorsit, ut quod pectus medium disjunxit spinam et vitalia interrupit; et sic lubricus ensis super crus dextrum integer exivit: sicque caput integrum cum dextra parte corporis