The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon [1977]
[Footnote 109: Gierusalomme Liberata, canto xiii. It is pleasant enough to observe how Tasso has copied and embellished the minutest details of the siege.]
[Footnote *: This does not appear by Wilken's account, (p. 294.) They fought in vair the whole of the Thursday. - M.]
[Footnote 110: Besides the Latins, who are not ashamed of the massacre, see Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 363,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 243,) and M. De Guignes, tom. ii. p. ii. p. 99, from Aboulmahasen.]
[Footnote 111: The old tower Psephina, in the middle ages Neblosa, was named Castellum Pisanum, from the patriarch Daimbert. It is still the citadel, the residence of the Turkish aga, and commands a prospect of the Dead Sea, Judea, and Arabia, (D'Anville, p. 19 - 23.) It was likewise called the Tower of David.]
[Footnote 112: Hume, in his History of England, vol. i. p. 311, 312, octavo edition.]
[Footnote 113: Voltaire, in his Essai sur l'Histoire Generale, tom ii. c. 54, p 345, 346]
Eight days after this memorable event, which Pope Urban did not live to hear, the Latin chiefs proceeded to the election of a king, to guard and govern their conquests in Palestine. Hugh the Great, and Stephen of Chartres, had retired with some loss of reputation, which they strove to regain by a second crusade and an honorable death. Baldwin was established at Edessa, and Bohemond at Antioch; and two Roberts, the duke of Normandy ^114 and the count of Flanders, preferred their fair inheritance in the West to a doubtful competition or a barren sceptre. The jealousy and ambition of Raymond were condemned by his own followers, and the free, the just, the unanimous voice of the army proclaimed Godfrey of Bouillon the first and most worthy of the champions of Christendom. His magnanimity accepted a trust as full of danger as of glory; but in a city where his Savior had been crowned with thorns, the devout pilgrim rejected the name and ensigns of royalty; and the founder of the kingdom of Jerusalem contented himself with the modest title of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre. His government of a single year, ^115 too short for the public happiness, was interrupted in the first fortnight by a summons to the field, by the approach of the vizier or sultan of Egypt, who had been too slow to prevent, but who was impatient to avenge, the loss of Jerusalem. His total overthrow in the battle of Ascalon sealed the establishment of the Latins in Syria, and signalized the valor of the French princes who in this action bade a long farewell to the holy wars.
Some glory might be derived from the prodigious inequality of numbers, though I shall not count the myriads of horse and foot ^* on the side of the Fatimites; but, except three thousand Ethiopians or Blacks, who were armed with flails or scourges of iron, the Barbarians of the South fled on the first onset, and afforded a pleasing comparison between the active valor of the Turks and the sloth and effeminacy of the natives of Egypt. After suspending before the holy sepulchre the sword and standard of the sultan, the new king (he deserves the title) embraced his departing companions, and could retain only with the gallant Tancred three hundred knights, and two thousand foot-soldiers for the defence of Palestine. His sovereignty was soon attacked by a new enemy, the only one against whom Godfrey was a coward. Adhemar, bishop of Puy, who excelled both in council and action, had been swept away in the last plague at Antioch: the remaining ecclesiastics preserved only the pride and avarice of their character; and their seditious clamors had required that the choice of a bishop should precede that of a king. The revenue and jurisdiction of the